Negative Forces in Consumption: Their Unpleasant but Undeniable Influence on Consumers

An unfortunate reality of consumer behavior is that it has a negative side: Consumers can experience negative emotions (Harrison-Walker, 2019); firm-consumer relationships can grow sour (Do, 2019); and so on. Already quite prevalent, negative forces in consumption have only increased lately because of the COVID-19 pandemic (Gaydos, 2020). Given the pervasiveness of negative forces in consumer behavior, it is very important for consumer psychologists to study them. To that end, the three essays in this dissertation explore wide-ranging facets of negative forces in consumer behavior and, collectively, greatly augment the field’s understanding of the behaviors, processes, and outcomes comprising the less pleasant side of consumption. Essay One studies consumer behaviors in the face of a negative marketing mix action—when a firm cuts loyalty programs benefits. This essay investigates changes in consumers’ loyalty program satisfaction when the benefits granted to their own tier remain constant over two periods but the benefits granted to another tier are reduced (vs. also remain constant). The research demonstrates that consumers become more satisfied with a loyalty program when another tier loses (vs. does not lose) benefits, because of counterfactual thinking and relative value considerations. Essay Two explores a psychological mechanism that relates to negative forces in consumption. This essay studies an unexplored facet of gift-giving—the importance of selecting a good gift—and finds that it is more important to givers than recipients that a good gift be given. This giver-recipient asymmetry can manifest as givers making choices that do not align with recipients’ preferences. In addition, drawing on contextualized self-enhancement theory, this research shows that the asymmetry is driven primarily by givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift rather than the positive implications of giving a good one. Essay Three investigates consumer reactions to peers’ negative experiences. This essay studies the impact of peers’ repeated misfortunes on the schadenfreude that observing consumers feel and explores the mediating roles that three mechanisms play in the process: perceptions of how severe a misfortune is for the consumer experiencing it, perceptions of the degree to which the consumer feels upset, and perceptions of how deserving the consumer is of the misfortune. In addition, this work examines whether misfortune magnitude moderates the relationship between repeated misfortunes and schadenfreude. In sum, this dissertation explores several aspects of negative forces in consumer behavior, ranging from negative firm behaviors to psychological mechanisms tied to negativity to consumer reactions to peers’ negative experiences. Collectively, the findings provide a deeper understanding of the less pleasant, but important, side of consumption. Moreover, given the array of topics covered across the three essays, the research comprising this dissertation should appeal to a wide community of researchers, including those interested in negative consumption experiences, self-other decision making, loyalty programs, gift giving, counterfactual thinking, schadenfreude, and social psychology