Buyer beware of your shadow: how price moderates the effect of incidental similarity on buyer behavior

Using both a lab experiment and actual transaction data, we investigated whether and how incidental similarities (e.g., shared letters between buyer and seller's name) might influence buyer behavior. Particularly, while prior work suggests that consumers generally prefer incidental similarity,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of applied social psychology Vol. 44; no. 10; pp. 643 - 649
Main Authors Kachersky, Luke, Sen, Sankar, Kim, Hyeong Min, Carnevale, Marina
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hoboken Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.10.2014
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects
Consumer behavior
Prices
Social psychology
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Summary:Using both a lab experiment and actual transaction data, we investigated whether and how incidental similarities (e.g., shared letters between buyer and seller's name) might influence buyer behavior. Particularly, while prior work suggests that consumers generally prefer incidental similarity, we use the context of Internet auctions to show that this preference reverses when prices are high. Under these conditions, buyers avoid incidentally similar sellers. We speculate that this effect is tied to individuals' motive to self‐protect. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Bibliography:istex:F290BB02F3C5A7BB0CCA15A7933DEC0AEB47CC9D
ArticleID:JASP12255
ark:/67375/WNG-WR0S8GVL-H
ISSN:0021-9029
1559-1816
DOI:10.1111/jasp.12255