2019
Irene Scopelliti
Home University Cass Business School, University of London
Visit 13 until 14 May 2019
Individual Talks Please contact Sandro
Inviting Chair Wangenheim
Abstract:
Putting the “Self” Back into Self-Control: Superordinate Goal Violation and Anticipated Regret Characterize Self-Control Failures
Abstract: Self-control is a prominent topic in consumer research, where it is often conceptualized as the abstinence from hedonic consumption. We examine whether this conceptualization accurately captures consumers’ experiences of self-control conflicts and self-control failures in light of seminal self-control theories in economics and psychology. In four scenario-based experiments and one experiment involving real choices, we show that consumers’ experience of self-control failures is represented by choices in violation of long-term goals accompanied by anticipated regret, rather than by the choice of hedonic over utilitarian consumption. These results have important methodological, theoretical, and practical implications. Methodologically, they highlight the need of experimental paradigms with higher construct validity. Theoretically, they help elucidate how self-control is distinct from impatience and self-regulation. Practically, they provide a rich set of hypotheses that allow for deducing interventions on the individual and public policy level to help consumers exert self-control.
Bio: Irene Scopelliti is a Reader in Marketing at Cass Business School, City University of London. She researches how biases and psychological miscalibrations influence human judgments and decisions. Her research in the fields of consumer psychology and decision making has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Management Science, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management, and is regularly featured by major news organizations including Forbes, Time Magazine, BBC News, the New York Times, the Independent, and the Huffington Post.
Dr. Scopelliti received a Ph.D. in Marketing from Bocconi University, and prior to joining Cass she was a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. She teaches postgraduate courses and seminars on marketing analytics, on consumer and managerial decision making, and on the design and analysis of experiments.
Brownbag seminar with:
Professor Jagdip Singh
AT&T Professor at the Weatherhead School
Abstract
Scarcity principle, when marketers create a sense of imminent unavailability to motivate customer purchase, has received wide attention in personal selling and customer behavior literature. Invariably in these studies, customers are recipients of marketers’ scarcity tactic. New frontline technologies have empowered customers to deploy a scarcity tactic of their own by creating a sense of imminent purchase decision to motivate the marketer to offer a deal, match a competitive deal or reinstate an earlier deal. We study this phenomenon in the context of B2C webchats involving high valued, durable products. Specifically, we develop a deny-delay-deliver framework to examine scarcity tactic used by webchat salespeople to convert bargain-seeking customers. Our counter-intuitive insight is that frontline agents’ actions to deliver or consent to the customers’ proposition is likely to have low probability of sales close unless it is accompanied by deny and delay actions. We test the predictions of the deny-delay-deliver framework of scarcity tactic in a large webchat selling data where the selection is on customers contacting the webchat sales center (in-bound calling) to evoke scarcity while seeking a bargain.
About the speaker
Jagdip Singh is AT&T Professor at the Weatherhead School, and has an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Singh is a recipient of John S. Diekhoff award for excellence in graduate teaching (CWRU), Excellence in Doctoral Teaching and Mentoring award (Weatherhead) and Weatherhead School’s Research Recognition Award for outstanding contributions to research. Dr. Singh has also received “Excellence in Reviewing” awards from the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Dr. Singh currently serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Retailing, among others.