Magical Thinking and Contagion: A Descriptive Review

The purpose of this literature review was to gain an understanding of magical thinking and contagion in the consumer behaviour context and to explore future research directions. To identify relevant literature, a comprehensive database search was conducted, using keywords: “magical thinking”, “superstition”, “contagion”, and “disgust”. A number of articles that have been published suggest that consumers view the product that is touched by others as being contaminated, which elicits feelings of disgust and eventually decreases their evaluations and intentions to purchase. The review also reveals that previous studies have not established how contagion responses work for second-hand products in an online setting, which leads to my hypotheses for future research