Anecdotal evidence suggests that incidents like the recall of the exploding Samsung Galaxy 7 phones drive owners of other (competing) brands to experience and express feelings of joy when a rival brand fails (e.g., “the hottest phone in the streets!”). Although consumers sometimes experience brand-related schadenfreude—that is, joy out of other brand’s failure—, psychological processes driving schadenfreude are not clearly understood (Hickman & Ward, 2007; Van Dijk, Van Koningsbruggen, Ouwerkerk, & Wesseling, 2011). We propose that schadenfreude may be elicited by consumers’ tendencies to stand by their choices (Ye & Gawronski, 2016). We demonstrate that consumers show higher levels of schadenfreude if their choice is disconfirmed; for example, by a comparative product review that evaluates their chosen brand to be inferior to a rival non-chosen brand. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by the popularity of the chosen brand and mediated by feelings of self-threat. Moreover, we show that this effect is stronger for narcissists. We also find evidence that schadenfreude is a means for consumers to reaffirm their sense of self after they experience a self-threat induced by the disconfirmation of their choice.

We investigate how two concurrent multimodal sensory primes affect consumers’ evaluation of green products. More specifically, we study how an action of physical cleansing—which enables consumers to smell cleaning scents and offers them a sensation of physical cleanliness—influence their subsequent green detergent choices. Based on the theory of embodied cognition (Barsalou, 2008), we theorize that the two sensory inputs can simultaneously prime morality and cleaning effectiveness—two related yet different concepts—, which can be diagnostic for green product evaluations. The results of two studies show that both the cleaning effectiveness and the primed morality affect how consumers judge a green detergent. On the one hand, consumers infer how effective the detergent is from its scent strength and artificiality – the milder and the more natural the scent is perceived to be, the ―greener‖ and the less effective the detergent is judged to be compared to a regular, non-green alternative. On the other hand, the act of physical cleansing primes the sense of moral superiority of consumers relative to ―others.‖ The consumers who feel morally superior to others then underestimate how attractive the green detergent is going to be to ―other consumers‖ in the market (i.e., to the rest of the market). Our research contributes to both the psychophysiology and the green marketing literature. Regarding the former, we demonstrate a novel multisensory interaction effect by investigating how the brain deals with two competing primed concepts at the same time. Regarding the latter, our findings explain why making people feel moral does not always promote green or ethical consumption (Khan & Dhar, 2006; Mazar & Zhong, 2010). Apart from the account of moral licensing, we further identify that self-based green choices are largely utilitarian and driven by a pragmatic self-interest rather than by morality.

How stable are shopping styles of women and men across cultures? To find out, the authors develop a new scale that reliably measures differences between male and female shopping styles and is stable across cultures. They develop a conceptual model and hypotheses to test whether observed differences in gender shopping styles are likely to be innate or arise from socialization. Through a survey of consumers in seven countries, they show that males and females are evolutionary predisposed to have different shopping styles. Counter to social structural theory, the observed differences in shopping style between females and males are greater in low-context cultures (higher gender equality countries) than in high-context cultures (lower gender equality countries). Empathizing—the ability to tune into another person’s thoughts and feelings—mediates shopping style more for female shoppers; systemizing—the degree to which an individual possesses spatial skills—mediates shopping style more for male shoppers. Therefore, retail segmentation between females and males appears to be of more managerial relevance than segmentation between cultures. Other managerial implications are also discussed.