Peggy J. Liu

Firms can bundle material goods together in various ways, including based on their usage complementarity (i.e., the likelihood that the goods are used together). While prior research has investigated the consequences of bundling products that are high (vs. low) in usage complementarity, the current research uncovers the benefits of bundling products that are moderate in usage complementarity (e.g., a coffee mug and a folding chair). Thirteen preregistered experiments show that bundling products that are moderate in usage complementarity offers companies a unique advantage: Bundling these products prompts consumers to view them as relatively more experiential compared to bundling products that are low or high in usage complementarity and compared to their non-bundled components. This perceptual shift occurs because bundling products with moderate usage complementarity increases contextualization—the degree to which consumers consider the setting in which the products could be used rather than the use of the products themselves. It also changes consumer behavior in ways that can benefit firms (e.g., increasing purchase likelihood when seeking an experience). This research offers theoretical contributions to the bundling and material-experiential literatures and practical implications for companies interested in different bundling approaches and obtaining the advantages of heightened experiential perceptions for material goods.

This paper shows that people are less generous with money compared to other resources. In multiple dictator game studies involving allocations of fixed sums between self and other, people allocated a lower proportion of money to others compared to other resources (food, goods, space, time). This effect generalized across adult participants in France and the U.S., real and hypothetical allocations, and when people allocated one or multiple resources. On average, people allocated 36% of their endowed money to others (38% when hypothetical, 17% facing real incentives), whereas for non-monetary resources, they allocated 15 percentage-points more to others (14 percentage-points more when hypothetical, 18 percentage-points more facing real incentives). Convergent evidence from studies using different approaches (open-ended responses, correlational analysis, incentivized and hypothetical experiments) points to versatility and desirability as main drivers of the effect. These findings thus indicate a robust tendency to be less generous with monetary versus non-monetary resources and identify versatility and desirability as two key characteristics of monetary resources that make people less generous with them than with non-monetary resources.

Consumers’ portion size choices are important, as they can influence how much food is eaten and wasted. While previous research has focused on self-selected portion sizes, this research examines portion size choices for others. The authors demonstrate that consumers choose larger portion sizes for others than for themselves, across both healthy and unhealthy foods, and for a wide range of different others. Choosing larger portion sizes for others is problematic, as the authors show that it can contribute to increased food waste. Both process-consistent moderation and mediation show that one driver of choosing larger portion sizes for others is consumers’ desire to view themselves as being caring. Alternative accounts (e.g., predicting that others want to eat more than the self, greater consumption amount uncertainty for others than the self) are addressed. Finally, a process-consistent intervention that reframes the meaning of being caring as mitigating the burden of unwanted leftovers for others decreases portion size choices for others. Altogether, this research offers theoretical contributions to the literatures on food decision-making and choices for others and offers practical contributions by identifying a novel contributor to food waste in social contexts and thus a potential target for interventions aimed at mitigating food waste.

In many societies, attaining cultural ideals of physical attractiveness is desirable (e.g., being beautiful), but pursuing physical attractiveness is not (e.g., being vain). How do people address these paradoxical standards? We argue that people meet the standards to both appear slim and appear to have good values by disguising their true motives for ambiguous actions (i.e., diet and exercise): they project more virtuous health motives to others despite being actually driven by physical appearance motives. Five preregistered studies and two supplemental studies ( N = 4,321) find evidence for this behavior and offer an intervention to increase the extent to which people are actually driven by health (vs. physical appearance) motives in private. Moreover, we find that this behavior is driven by the desire to be seen by others as having good values. Altogether, this research contributes to a better understanding of the distorted discourse surrounding health, diet, exercise, and appearance.

What influences consumers to make product decisions alone versus with household partners? This research examines how consumers’ preference for solo or joint decision-making with household partners varies between product acquisition and disposal stages. Ten preregistered studies demonstrate that for many household products, consumers are more likely to choose joint (vs. solo) decision-making with household partners for disposal than for acquisition. This asymmetry occurs because disposal (vs. acquisition) increases perceptions of the potential for infringement on a household partner's rights, which increases the desire for clarity about a partner's product valuation and thus the choice of joint (vs. solo) decision-making with one's partner. The authors identify three process-consistent boundary conditions wherein this acquisition–disposal asymmetry is mitigated: (1) when the product cannot be used by one's partner, (2) when considering decisions with nonhousehold members (e.g., noncohabitating close friends) instead of one's household partner, and (3) when the product's price exceeds the household's typical budgeted spending. Moreover, the authors discuss implications of this acquisition–disposal asymmetry for consumer well-being and marketing strategies, including its potential to cause delays in disposal decisions relative to acquisition decisions. This research sheds light on household decision dynamics and identifies a novel contributor to overaccumulation of household products.

It is often said that much of consumption is “social” in nature, but what does this mean? This article proposes the social congruency framework for differentiating between different types of social consumption experiences—characterizing a consumption experience with respect to congruency with a social partner on up to three dimensions: what , where , and when . Utilizing this social congruency framework, we propose four different social consumption experiences: solo consumption with a social referent, asynchronous social consumption, synchronous social consumption, and shared consumption. We then leverage this framework to differentiate between different types of social consumption experiences and to explicate why this differentiation between different types of social consumption experiences matters in terms of how it can facilitate future research examining the nature of congruency within experiences as well as the antecedents and consequences across social consumption experiences.

In many societies, attaining cultural ideals of physical attractiveness is desirable (e.g., being beautiful), but pursuing physical attractiveness is not (e.g., being vain). How do people address these paradoxical standards? We argue that people meet the standards to both appear slim and appear to have good values by disguising their true motives for ambiguous actions (i.e., diet, exercise): they project more virtuous health motives to others despite being actually driven by physical appearance motives. Five pre-registered studies and two supplemental studies (N = 4,321) find evidence for this behavior and offer an intervention to increase the extent to which people are actually driven by health (vs. physical appearance) motives in private. Moreover, we find that this behavior is driven by the desire to be seen by others as having good values. Altogether, this research contributes to a better understanding of the distorted discourse surrounding health, exercise, and appearance.

It is often said that much of consumption is "social" in nature, but what does this mean? This article proposes the social congruency framework for differentiating between different types of social consumption experiences-characterizing a consumption experience with respect to congruency with a social partner on up to three dimensions: what, when, and where. Utilizing this social congruency framework, we propose four different social consumption experiences: solo consumption with a social referent, asynchronous social consumption, synchronous social consumption, and shared consumption. Then, we leverage this framework to differentiate between different types of social consumption experiences and to explicate why this differentiation between different types of social consumption experiences matters in terms of how it can facilitate future research examining the nature of congruency within experiences as well as the antecedents and consequences across social consumption experiences.

Brands and retailers often offer different aesthetic versions of the same base product, which vary from visually simple to visually complex. How should managers price these different aesthetic versions of the same base product? This research provides insights for such decisions through uncovering a novel consumer lay belief about the relationship between visual complexity and production costs. Consumers associate simple (vs. complex) visual aesthetics with lower production costs when evaluating different aesthetic versions of a product. This lay belief occurs in joint evaluation mode but is mitigated in separate evaluation mode. An important downstream implication of this lay belief is that consumers’ willingness to pay is lower for visually simple (vs. complex) versions. This gap in willingness to pay occurs even when consumers like both product versions or aesthetics equally, and it is only eliminated when consumers like the visually simple version substantially more than the complex version. Finally, reducing the diagnosticity of the lay belief by disclosing information that the two versions took similar amounts of production time and effort reduces the gap in willingness to pay between visually simple (vs. complex) versions.