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This research examines how the unsystematic (vs. systematic) spatial arrangement of a set of alternatives affects consumers' product choices. The key hypothesis is that an unsystematic product arrangement—in which an assortment consisting of several alternatives is arranged in an apparently arbitrary manner—causes greater perceptual disfluency, which in turn triggers more extensive exploratory product search, ultimately promoting the choice of unfamiliar products. This sequence of effects is particularly pronounced when consumers do not have a strong prior preference for specific alternatives in the assortment. Evidence from five studies, including a large-scale field experiment, provides support for this theorizing across various display formats and product domains. The findings advance our understanding of how the spatial arrangement of a product assortment influences consumer choice, and they shed light on the psychological mechanism that governs this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research demonstrates how conversational robo advisors as opposed to static, non-conversational robo advisors alter perceptions of trust, the evaluation of a financial services firm, and consumer financial decision making. We develop and empirically test a novel conceptualization of conversational robo advisors building on prior work in human-to-human communication and interpersonal psychology, showing that conversational robo advisors cause greater levels of affective trust compared to non-conversational robo advisors and evoke a more benevolent evaluation of a financial services firm. We demonstrate that this increase in affective trust not only affects firm perception (in terms of benevolence attributions or a more positively-valenced onboarding experience), but has important implications for investor behavior, such as greater recommendation acceptance and an increase in asset allocation toward conversational robo advisors. These findings have important implications for research on trust formation between humans and machines, the effective design of conversational robo advisors, and public policy in the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does mass customization succeed in some East Asian markets but fail in others? Building on and extending prior work on uncertainty avoidance, this research suggests that providing mass customization in highly uncertainty-avoiding cultures can have negative consequences for consumers and companies, including longer configuration duration, lower conversion rates to actually purchase the customized product, and a reduced degree of sharing one's product with other consumers. We provide support for those propositions based on two large-scale field studies involving more than 700,000 prospective car buyers in Japan and Taiwan (scoring high on uncertainty avoidance) versus China and Singapore (scoring low on uncertainty avoidance). Our findings on actual customers suggest that neglecting cross-national differences in uncertainty avoidance across East Asia puts both consumers and companies at risk due to more onerous customization experiences for consumers and substantially lower conversion for companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]