Black Friday (BF) is the day after Thanksgiving when U.S. retailers offer “doorbuster” promotions. BF shopping has become a tradition for 48.5% of U.S. shoppers and their families (NRF, 2015). However, BF has a dark side gaining notoriety as shoppers compete for bargains, even at others’ expense. Many incidents of consumer misbehavior (CMB) have been reported: fighting, pepper-spraying, and throwing oneself on desired products to keep other shoppers at bay (Black Friday violence, 2011; Lisa, 2015). BF promotions have expanded outside the U.S. to the U.K.; related CMB (e.g., fighting) was reported in several U.K. locations (“Black Friday,” 2014).
Using an online experiment, this study investigated antecedents to CMB from a psychological perspective. Specifically this study examined (1) how positive and negative emotion evoked on BF as a result of varying levels of goal blockage impacts CMB; (2) how personality traits such as self-control and public self-consciousness impact and moderate the relationship between negative emotions evoked on BF and CMB; and (3) how women and men differ in terms of antecedents driving BF CMB and the role personality traits play in impacting CMB.
576 BF shoppers completed the experiment; 411 (M=129, F=282) had shopped in stores on BF were included in analyses. Mean age was 25.8 (SD=8.2) and over half had shopped in stores and online on BF. All scales had adequate reliabilities and EFA confirmed the dimensionality of the original scales. Two emotion factors were named anger and thrill. To assess CMB, shoppers indicated the extent to which they engaged in a series of misbehaviors on BF. A second measure of misbehavior, dysfunctional severity of one’s behavior, evaluated the extent to which one’s own behavior on BF was unacceptable and inappropriate.
Multi-group path analysis was used to analyze the data. Results found a significant difference between the sexes (Δdf= 8, Δχ2=32.48, p < .0001), suggesting that women and men do differ in the personality traits impacting CMB. To determine specific paths that differ between the sexes, a series of the χ2 difference tests were performed by imposing equality constraints on each of the path coefficients. The χ2 difference tests showed that women and men significantly differed in four paths; (1) how anger impacted dysfunctional severity (2) how self-control moderated the relationship between anger and CMB, (3) how public self-consciousness moderated the relationship between anger and CMB and (4) how public self-consciousness impacted CMB. For both sexes, both negative emotion such as anger and positive emotion such as thrill led to CMB. Additionally, dysfunctional severity had a positive influence on CMB for both women and men. However different personality traits moderated how anger impacted CMB. For women, public self-consciousness had a direct positive and moderating effect on CMB. When women experienced a mild level of anger, public self-consciousness appears to suppress CMB. However contrary to common beliefs that public self-consciousness may help manage behavior in public, after a certain threshold in terms of the intensity of anger, public self-consciousness had an opposite effect in women. High public women exhibited more CMB than low public women. Public self-consciousness had no direct or moderating effect on men. For men, self-control had a direct, indirect and moderating effect on CMB. In the context of intense anger, men with higher self-control exhibited less CMB than those with low self-control. Self-control also had an indirect effect on CMB by mitigating dysfunctional severity. For women, self-control had no impact on CMB.
BF is part of the U.S. Thanksgiving tradition and has been adopted in other countries to kick off the holiday shopping season. Extreme deals (doorbusters) and heightened consumer anticipation as a result of such promotions have led to incidents CMB on BF (Lisa, 2015). With observations of CMB on BF across different countries and extant research findings about the role of emotion on CMB (Bedi & Schat, 2007), this study revealed (1) emotion as a motivator for CMB, (2) that personality traits moderated the impact of emotion on CMB, and (3) differences exist in these relationships between women and men. Both negative (anger) and positive emotion (thrill) led both sexes to misbehave on BF. Whereas most media highlight how angry customers misbehave on BF, positive emotion also contributes to CMB on BF. How personality traits moderated the relationship between anger and CMB significantly differed between the sexes. For women, public self-consciousness mattered, whereas self-control mattered to men in moderating the effect of anger on CMB. The findings of this research shed new light on CMB on BF and also give new insights into the CMB literature. Prior CMB research often assumed that the sexes behave similarly. This research provides empirical evidence that women and men are indeed different in how personality moderates the effect of anger on CMB. Future research is needed to determine the level of anger and public self-consciousness that lead to CMB for women.

• Sharron J. Lennon(Indiana University, USA)
• Minjeong Kim(Indiana University, USA)
• Jaeha Lee(North Dakota State University, USA)
• Kim K. P. Johnson(University of Minnesota, USA)