The DOI matches its Crossref record; 30 of the 30 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Seeking Freedom through Variety
Abstract
This article examines the effect of spatial confinement on consumer choices. Building on reactance theory and the environmental psychology literature, we propose that spatially confined consumers react against an incursion to their personal space by making more varied and unique choices. We present four laboratory experiments and one field study to support our theorizing. Study 1 demonstrates that people in narrower aisles seek more variety than people in wider aisles. Study 2 indicates that this effect of confinement in narrow aisles also extends to more unique choices. Study 3 shows that perceptions of confinement exert their strongest influence on people who are chronically high in reactance. Study 4 suggests that influencing perceptions of confinement is sufficient to evoke variety seeking. Finally, the field study uses crowding as a proxy for confinement and finds a positive relationship between crowding and variety seeking in real grocery purchases.
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Citations
Cites
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The Impact of Private versus Public Consumption on Variety-Seeking Behavior
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Cited by
Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis
Chernev, A., Böckenholt, U., & Goodman, J. (2015) · Journal of Consumer Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2014.08.002 · Cited by 858
The Compensatory Consumer Behavior Model: How self‐discrepancies drive consumer behavior
Mandel, N., Rucker, D. D., Levav, J., & Galinsky, A. D. (2017) · Journal of Consumer Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2016.05.003 · Cited by 564
Self-citationPower and consumer behavior: How power shapes who and what consumers value
Rucker, D. D., Galinsky, A. D., & Dubois, D. (2012) · Journal of Consumer Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2011.06.001 · Cited by 452
The effects of religion on consumer behavior: A conceptual framework and research agenda
Mathras, D., Cohen, A. B., Mandel, N., & Mick, D. G. (2016) · Journal of Consumer Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2015.08.001 · Cited by 399
Mobile Ad Effectiveness: Hyper-Contextual Targeting with Crowdedness
Andrews, M., Luo, X., Fang, Z., & Ghose, A. (2016) · Marketing Science · doi:10.1287/mksc.2015.0905 · Cited by 355
Metadata
- Authors
- Levav, J., & Zhu, R.
- Venue
- Journal of Consumer Research
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2009-12
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 600-610
- ISSN
- 0093-5301 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5277
- OpenAlex
- W2149752603
- Cited by
- 295
- References
- 30
- FWCI
- 22.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
