Susan M Broniarczyk
Biographic Data
| ID | 81868 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan M Broniarczyk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan M |
| FAMILY NAME | Broniarczyk |
| SIGNATURE | BRONIARCZYK S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 113 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Pursuit of Meaning and the Preference for Less Expensive Options
Finding meaning in life is a fundamental human motivation. Along with pleasure, meaning is a pillar of happiness and well-being. Yet, despite the centrality of this motive, and despite firms' attempts to appeal to this motive, scant research has investigated how the pursuit of meaning influences consumer choice, especially in comparison to the study of pleasure. While previous perspectives would suggest that the pursuit of meaning tilts consumers…
Multitasking as Consumer Compensatory Control
Consumer multitasking (i.e., working on multiple tasks simultaneously) is a widespread modern phenomenon, yet the literature lacks an understanding of when and why consumers multitask. We experimentally show that consumers engage in multitasking behavior as a way to compensate for feelings of low control. Specifically, across five main studies and seven web appendix studies using two different multitasking paradigms, we find that consumers feelin…
How and Why Our Eating Decisions Neglect Infrequently Consumed Foods
This article introduces a novel distinction between foods as a function of the frequency with which consumers eat them, and investigates how this distinction influences dietary beliefs and decisions. It compares food types perceived to be consumed relatively infrequently (i.e., infrequent foods) to those perceived to be consumed relatively frequently (i.e., frequent foods). Across an analysis of archival data from a popular calorie tracking app a…
Love, Lies, and Money: Financial Infidelity in Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships are built on trust, but partners are not always honest about their financial behavior-they may hide spending, debt, and savings from one another. This article introduces the construct of financial infidelity, defined as "engaging in any financial behavior expected to be disapproved of by one's romantic partner and intentionally failing to disclose this behavior to them." We develop and validate the Financial Infidelity Scal…
The Effect of Categorization on Goal Progress Perceptions and Motivation
Consumers monitor their goal progress to know how much effort they need to invest to achieve their goals. However, the factors influencing consumers' goal progress monitoring are largely unexamined. Seven studies (N = 8,409) identified categorization as a novel factor that influences goal progress perceptions, with consequences for motivation. When pursuing a goal, categorization cues lead consumers to perceive that their goal-relevant actions ar…
From Close to Distant: The Dynamics of Interpersonal Relationships in Shared Goal Pursuit
This research examines how individuals' relationship with others sharing the pursuit of the same individual goal may change from early to later stages of the pursuit. In one qualitative field study, one lab study, and a 7-day field experiment, consumers demonstrated a tendency to view others in shared pursuit as “friends” to seek support from and alleviate uncertainties during the early stage of the pursuit; however, once they reached the advance…
Self-Identity and Consumer Behavior Dissociative versus Associative Responses to Social Identity Threat: The Role of Consumer Self-Construal Self-Affirmation through the Choice of Highly Aesthetic Pro…
Consumer researchers have recognized for a long time that people consume in ways that are consistent with their sense of self (Levy 1959; Sirgy 1982). Important thought leaders in our field have described and documented that consumers use possessions and brands to create their self-identities and communicate these selves to others and to themselves (e.g., Belk 1988; Fournier 1998; McCracken 1989). Although early research tended to focus on broad …
So near and yet so far: The mental representation of goal progress
In the present article, we explore whether people's mental representation of progress level can function as a self-regulation mechanism that helps motivate continued effort in the pursuit. We propose that when individuals have just started pursuing a goal and have accumulated only limited progress, they exaggerate the achieved progress level in their mental representation to signal a higher chance of eventual goal attainment and thus elicit great…
It's Not Me, It's You: How Gift Giving Creates Giver Identity Threat as a Function of Social Closeness
Prior research has established that consumers are motivated to purchase identity-consistent products. We extend consumer identity research into an important consumer context, gift giving, in which individuals may make product choices that run counter to their own identities in order to fulfill the desires of the intended recipient. We find that purchasing an identity-contrary gift for a close (vs. distant) friend who is an integral part of the se…
Counteractive Construal in Consumer Goal Pursuit
The present research explores a self-control operation, namely, counteractive construal, that helps consumers resolve the conflicts between an important goal and a short-term temptation by altering the construal of the temptation. We propose that when experiencing a self-control conflict, consumers intentionally construe temptation as more damaging to the attainment of a long-term goal and use these distorted construals to help resolve the confli…
Recommendation or Evaluation? Task Sensitivity in Information Source Selection
Ironically, when consumers turn to an information source to assist in decision making, they are faced with the added responsibility of having to make a decision about the information source itself. A normative model is presented that shows that consumer assessment of an information source should include both the task for which an information source is sought and the appropriate probability of success for the task. A key distinction between tasks …
Integrating Multiple Opinions: The Role of Aspiration Level on Consumer Response to Critic Consensus
Four studies examine the process by which consumers integrate critic opinions and attribute information into their product evaluations and how critic consensus affects this process. A reference-dependent model is proposed such that consumer response to consensus depends on whether the average critic rating for an alternative is above or below an aspiration level. Consensus is shown to be preferred for alternatives above an aspiration level, where…
The Influence of Prior Beliefs, Frequency Cues, and Magnitude Cues on Consumers' Perceptions of Comparative Price Data
A widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store's prices to a competitor's prices on multiple items. An important, but largely unexplored, issue is how this information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions. In our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data-based cues—frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage—to determine thei…
The Role of Consumers' Intuitions in Inference Making
Traditional explorations of inference making have examined consumers' reactions to product descriptions that lack information about salient attributes. Such studies frequently report systematically lower evaluations of incompletely described alternatives along with a generally low incidence of unprompted attribute-to-attribute inference. We argue that the nature and likelihood of an inference are dependent on the cues available at the time of dec…
The Role of Consumers' Intuitions in Inference Making
Traditional explorations of inference making have examined consumers' reactions to product descriptions that lack information about salient attributes. Such studies frequently report systematically lower evaluations of incompletely described alternatives along with a generally low incidence of unprompted attribute-to-attribute inference. We argue that the nature and likelihood of an inference are dependent on the cues available at the time of dec…
It's Not Me, It's You: How Gift Giving Creates Giver Identity Threat as a Function of Social Closeness
Prior research has established that consumers are motivated to purchase identity-consistent products. We extend consumer identity research into an important consumer context, gift giving, in which individuals may make product choices that run counter to their own identities in order to fulfill the desires of the intended recipient. We find that purchasing an identity-contrary gift for a close (vs. distant) friend who is an integral part of the se…
The Influence of Prior Beliefs, Frequency Cues, and Magnitude Cues on Consumers' Perceptions of Comparative Price Data
A widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store's prices to a competitor's prices on multiple items. An important, but largely unexplored, issue is how this information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions. In our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data-based cues—frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage—to determine thei…
Counteractive Construal in Consumer Goal Pursuit
The present research explores a self-control operation, namely, counteractive construal, that helps consumers resolve the conflicts between an important goal and a short-term temptation by altering the construal of the temptation. We propose that when experiencing a self-control conflict, consumers intentionally construe temptation as more damaging to the attainment of a long-term goal and use these distorted construals to help resolve the confli…
Integrating Multiple Opinions: The Role of Aspiration Level on Consumer Response to Critic Consensus
Four studies examine the process by which consumers integrate critic opinions and attribute information into their product evaluations and how critic consensus affects this process. A reference-dependent model is proposed such that consumer response to consensus depends on whether the average critic rating for an alternative is above or below an aspiration level. Consensus is shown to be preferred for alternatives above an aspiration level, where…
Love, Lies, and Money: Financial Infidelity in Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships are built on trust, but partners are not always honest about their financial behavior-they may hide spending, debt, and savings from one another. This article introduces the construct of financial infidelity, defined as "engaging in any financial behavior expected to be disapproved of by one's romantic partner and intentionally failing to disclose this behavior to them." We develop and validate the Financial Infidelity Scal…
So near and yet so far: The mental representation of goal progress
In the present article, we explore whether people's mental representation of progress level can function as a self-regulation mechanism that helps motivate continued effort in the pursuit. We propose that when individuals have just started pursuing a goal and have accumulated only limited progress, they exaggerate the achieved progress level in their mental representation to signal a higher chance of eventual goal attainment and thus elicit great…
How and Why Our Eating Decisions Neglect Infrequently Consumed Foods
This article introduces a novel distinction between foods as a function of the frequency with which consumers eat them, and investigates how this distinction influences dietary beliefs and decisions. It compares food types perceived to be consumed relatively infrequently (i.e., infrequent foods) to those perceived to be consumed relatively frequently (i.e., frequent foods). Across an analysis of archival data from a popular calorie tracking app a…
From Close to Distant: The Dynamics of Interpersonal Relationships in Shared Goal Pursuit
This research examines how individuals' relationship with others sharing the pursuit of the same individual goal may change from early to later stages of the pursuit. In one qualitative field study, one lab study, and a 7-day field experiment, consumers demonstrated a tendency to view others in shared pursuit as “friends” to seek support from and alleviate uncertainties during the early stage of the pursuit; however, once they reached the advance…
Recommendation or Evaluation? Task Sensitivity in Information Source Selection
Ironically, when consumers turn to an information source to assist in decision making, they are faced with the added responsibility of having to make a decision about the information source itself. A normative model is presented that shows that consumer assessment of an information source should include both the task for which an information source is sought and the appropriate probability of success for the task. A key distinction between tasks …
The Pursuit of Meaning and the Preference for Less Expensive Options
Finding meaning in life is a fundamental human motivation. Along with pleasure, meaning is a pillar of happiness and well-being. Yet, despite the centrality of this motive, and despite firms' attempts to appeal to this motive, scant research has investigated how the pursuit of meaning influences consumer choice, especially in comparison to the study of pleasure. While previous perspectives would suggest that the pursuit of meaning tilts consumers…
Multitasking as Consumer Compensatory Control
Consumer multitasking (i.e., working on multiple tasks simultaneously) is a widespread modern phenomenon, yet the literature lacks an understanding of when and why consumers multitask. We experimentally show that consumers engage in multitasking behavior as a way to compensate for feelings of low control. Specifically, across five main studies and seven web appendix studies using two different multitasking paradigms, we find that consumers feelin…
The Effect of Categorization on Goal Progress Perceptions and Motivation
Consumers monitor their goal progress to know how much effort they need to invest to achieve their goals. However, the factors influencing consumers' goal progress monitoring are largely unexamined. Seven studies (N = 8,409) identified categorization as a novel factor that influences goal progress perceptions, with consequences for motivation. When pursuing a goal, categorization cues lead consumers to perceive that their goal-relevant actions ar…
Self-Identity and Consumer Behavior Dissociative versus Associative Responses to Social Identity Threat: The Role of Consumer Self-Construal Self-Affirmation through the Choice of Highly Aesthetic Pro…
Consumer researchers have recognized for a long time that people consume in ways that are consistent with their sense of self (Levy 1959; Sirgy 1982). Important thought leaders in our field have described and documented that consumers use possessions and brands to create their self-identities and communicate these selves to others and to themselves (e.g., Belk 1988; Fournier 1998; McCracken 1989). Although early research tended to focus on broad …
The Influence of Prior Beliefs, Frequency Cues, and Magnitude Cues on Consumers' Perceptions of Comparative Price Data
A widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store's prices to a competitor's prices on multiple items. An important, but largely unexplored, issue is how this information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions. In our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data-based cues—frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage—to determine thei…
The Role of Consumers' Intuitions in Inference Making
Traditional explorations of inference making have examined consumers' reactions to product descriptions that lack information about salient attributes. Such studies frequently report systematically lower evaluations of incompletely described alternatives along with a generally low incidence of unprompted attribute-to-attribute inference. We argue that the nature and likelihood of an inference are dependent on the cues available at the time of dec…
Integrating Multiple Opinions: The Role of Aspiration Level on Consumer Response to Critic Consensus
Four studies examine the process by which consumers integrate critic opinions and attribute information into their product evaluations and how critic consensus affects this process. A reference-dependent model is proposed such that consumer response to consensus depends on whether the average critic rating for an alternative is above or below an aspiration level. Consensus is shown to be preferred for alternatives above an aspiration level, where…
Recommendation or Evaluation? Task Sensitivity in Information Source Selection
Ironically, when consumers turn to an information source to assist in decision making, they are faced with the added responsibility of having to make a decision about the information source itself. A normative model is presented that shows that consumer assessment of an information source should include both the task for which an information source is sought and the appropriate probability of success for the task. A key distinction between tasks …
Counteractive Construal in Consumer Goal Pursuit
The present research explores a self-control operation, namely, counteractive construal, that helps consumers resolve the conflicts between an important goal and a short-term temptation by altering the construal of the temptation. We propose that when experiencing a self-control conflict, consumers intentionally construe temptation as more damaging to the attainment of a long-term goal and use these distorted construals to help resolve the confli…
It's Not Me, It's You: How Gift Giving Creates Giver Identity Threat as a Function of Social Closeness
Prior research has established that consumers are motivated to purchase identity-consistent products. We extend consumer identity research into an important consumer context, gift giving, in which individuals may make product choices that run counter to their own identities in order to fulfill the desires of the intended recipient. We find that purchasing an identity-contrary gift for a close (vs. distant) friend who is an integral part of the se…
So near and yet so far: The mental representation of goal progress
In the present article, we explore whether people's mental representation of progress level can function as a self-regulation mechanism that helps motivate continued effort in the pursuit. We propose that when individuals have just started pursuing a goal and have accumulated only limited progress, they exaggerate the achieved progress level in their mental representation to signal a higher chance of eventual goal attainment and thus elicit great…
Self-Identity and Consumer Behavior Dissociative versus Associative Responses to Social Identity Threat: The Role of Consumer Self-Construal Self-Affirmation through the Choice of Highly Aesthetic Pro…
Consumer researchers have recognized for a long time that people consume in ways that are consistent with their sense of self (Levy 1959; Sirgy 1982). Important thought leaders in our field have described and documented that consumers use possessions and brands to create their self-identities and communicate these selves to others and to themselves (e.g., Belk 1988; Fournier 1998; McCracken 1989). Although early research tended to focus on broad …
From Close to Distant: The Dynamics of Interpersonal Relationships in Shared Goal Pursuit
This research examines how individuals' relationship with others sharing the pursuit of the same individual goal may change from early to later stages of the pursuit. In one qualitative field study, one lab study, and a 7-day field experiment, consumers demonstrated a tendency to view others in shared pursuit as “friends” to seek support from and alleviate uncertainties during the early stage of the pursuit; however, once they reached the advance…
Love, Lies, and Money: Financial Infidelity in Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships are built on trust, but partners are not always honest about their financial behavior-they may hide spending, debt, and savings from one another. This article introduces the construct of financial infidelity, defined as "engaging in any financial behavior expected to be disapproved of by one's romantic partner and intentionally failing to disclose this behavior to them." We develop and validate the Financial Infidelity Scal…
The Effect of Categorization on Goal Progress Perceptions and Motivation
Consumers monitor their goal progress to know how much effort they need to invest to achieve their goals. However, the factors influencing consumers' goal progress monitoring are largely unexamined. Seven studies (N = 8,409) identified categorization as a novel factor that influences goal progress perceptions, with consequences for motivation. When pursuing a goal, categorization cues lead consumers to perceive that their goal-relevant actions ar…
Multitasking as Consumer Compensatory Control
Consumer multitasking (i.e., working on multiple tasks simultaneously) is a widespread modern phenomenon, yet the literature lacks an understanding of when and why consumers multitask. We experimentally show that consumers engage in multitasking behavior as a way to compensate for feelings of low control. Specifically, across five main studies and seven web appendix studies using two different multitasking paradigms, we find that consumers feelin…
How and Why Our Eating Decisions Neglect Infrequently Consumed Foods
This article introduces a novel distinction between foods as a function of the frequency with which consumers eat them, and investigates how this distinction influences dietary beliefs and decisions. It compares food types perceived to be consumed relatively infrequently (i.e., infrequent foods) to those perceived to be consumed relatively frequently (i.e., frequent foods). Across an analysis of archival data from a popular calorie tracking app a…
The Pursuit of Meaning and the Preference for Less Expensive Options
Finding meaning in life is a fundamental human motivation. Along with pleasure, meaning is a pillar of happiness and well-being. Yet, despite the centrality of this motive, and despite firms' attempts to appeal to this motive, scant research has investigated how the pursuit of meaning influences consumer choice, especially in comparison to the study of pleasure. While previous perspectives would suggest that the pursuit of meaning tilts consumers…
Psychology (14 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (10 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Advertising (4 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (4 works)