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"The Ubiquity of Scarcity" is a document that explores the concept of scarcity in different contexts. It discusses the shift in Aboriginal Australian art from communal creation to individual artist signatures due to Western property rights. The document also examines how companies like Uber and Airbnb have commodified and monetized once-shared practices like hitchhiking and borrowing from neighbors. It further explores scarcity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and economic booms. The document concludes with an overview of nine articles in a special issue on scarcity, covering topics such as consumer behavior, business strategies, and societal implications. It highlights studies on how families respond to resource scarcity, the association between loneliness and mental health issues, and the connection between scarcity of coping resources and addictive consumption. The document acknowledges the contributions of researchers in the field of scarcity. [Extracted from the article]

Given curiosity's characterization as a motivational drive for knowledge, prior research has primarily focused on curiosity's positive effects on knowledge exploration, information acquisition, and learning. Once the desired knowledge has been acquired, curiosity is said to be satisfied. But what happens if curiosity is left unsatisfied? Across five experiments, spanning four domains of indulgence-related decisions and relying on different methods of curiosity elicitation, the present research sheds light on an unexpected yet crucial consequence of curiosity—that unsatisfied curiosity tempts indulgent consumption in domains unrelated to the source of the curiosity. This effect is explained by a generalized desire for rewards. Experiments 1–3 establish and replicate the proposed mediation model of curiosity —› desire for rewards —› indulgence, employing manipulation-of-process, moderation-of-process, and measurement-of-process experimental designs. Experiment 4 utilizes neurophysiological data to indicate brain activation in the insular cortex for unsatisfied (vs. satisfied) curiosity. Experiment 5 addresses the role of cognitive depletion as a possible alternative mechanism. In summary, this article demonstrates that the hunger for information that accompanies unsatisfied curiosity is converted into a generalized desire for rewards, which in turn tempts indulgence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the effect of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled checkouts on consumers' purchase intent and evaluations of the retailing atmosphere. It also offers novel findings pertaining to the mediating role of arousal and moderation by innovativeness importance on consumers' responses toward AI-enabled checkouts. Design/methodology/approach: Three pilot studies, two field studies and one online experiment featuring 1,567 respondents were conducted by manipulating checkout methods. Findings: AI-enabled checkouts lead to a higher level of arousal, which, in turn, yields more favorable store atmosphere evaluations and higher purchase intent. Furthermore, the positive effect of AI-enabled checkouts is moderated by consumers' innovativeness importance. Research limitations/implications: This research contributes to the emerging body of AI research and demonstrates a novel perspective by illuminating that under certain circumstances, AI-enabled checkouts lead to more positive outcomes relating to store atmosphere evaluations and purchase intent, as well as the unintended effect of heightened arousal. Practical implications: This study shows how marketers and practitioners can promote consumers' evaluations and patronage likelihood effectively by harnessing AI-enabled checkouts for those who consider innovativeness as important. Originality/value: This research documents the novel findings of how and when AI-enabled checkouts garner more favorable consumer responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five studies examine how perceived financial constraints and abundance determine when consumers will engage in solitary or social purchases. When financially constrained, consumers prefer solitary (vs. social) purchases. We also identify self-construal as a moderator of how consumers spend their discretionary income. While independent consumers prefer solitary (vs. social) purchases, interdependent consumers prefer social (vs. solitary) purchases. Interestingly, when consumers have adequate discretionary income, independent as well as interdependent consumers have similar preferences for solitary and social purchases. In addition, for interdependent consumers, communal norms mediate the preference for social purchases. Finally, for independent consumers, making the communal norm salient reverses their preference for solitary purchases, resulting in a preference for social purchases. Our findings suggest how managers can effectively promote different types of purchases under varying financial resource conditions in their global communication strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers often feel schadenfreude, an emotion reflecting an experience of pleasure over misfortunes of another. Schadenfreude has found wide use in advertising, but its actual consequences for consumers have not been thoroughly documented. The present research investigates the effect of schadenfreude on consumers' satisfaction with choices they have made. Building on the feelings‐as‐information theory, the authors posit that consumers take their positive feelings of schadenfreude over another's unrelated bad purchase as positive information about their own choices, and through such misattribution become more satisfied with their own choices. Three experiments show that feeling schadenfreude over another consumer's bad purchase makes consumers more satisfied with their own choices (Study 1), regardless of whether the other's bad purchase is in the same or in a different product category as one's own choice (Study 2), but only so long as consumers are not aware that they are engaging in misattribution (Study 3). The present research contributes to the literature on schadenfreude and feelings‐as‐information theory. Its findings may be used by marketers aiming to exert an unconscious influence on consumer satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four studies, using chronic and situational self-construal, supported the proposition that individualists (collectivists) focus on within-category richness (between-category differentiation). Collectivists judged paired products as less similar than individualists did, but only at the higher level of a category hierarchy (studies 1 and 2). Further, collectivists were more context driven in product ratings in a categorization task (study 3). Study 4 focused on high-level pairs and found that under high involvement, chronic self-construal dominated judgments. Under low involvement, chronic and situational construals interacted: individualists (collectivists) were less (more) amenable to the situational construal. Implications for self-construal and categorization research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experiments examine how prevention-focused and promotion-focused consumers evaluate the comparison brand and what information they anchor on in direct comparative ads framed positively or negatively. Negative (vs. positive) frames lead prevention-focused respondents to exhibit higher evaluations for the advertised brand and lower evaluations for the comparison brand. Under promotion focus, positive (vs. negative) frames lead to more favorable attitudes toward the advertised brand with no difference in attitudes for the comparison brand. Preference for consistency is posited as a possible process explanation. We also find an evaluation order effect: prevention-focused (promotion-focused) individuals evaluate the comparison (advertised) brand first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Three studies document that consumers'' implicit theories about the fixedness/malleability of personality guide brand personality updating in a brand extension context. The first two studies show that extension fit with the parent brand impacts brand personality updating only for incremental (vs. entity theorists). Specifically, for incremental theorists, brand personality is enhanced (vs. diluted) when extension fit is poor (vs. good), and only when brand personality is salient. The third study identifies conditions under which entity theorists focus on brand personality. Interestingly, overall evaluations of the parent brand and extension vary only with extension fit. Implications of our research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While research on innovation and new product development abounds in the literature, studies on firms deleting brands from their portfolio are virtually non-existent. This paper provides a pioneering examination of how brand elimination might influence consumer evaluations of the firm. As compared to a widely-held belief that brand elimination would adversely affect firm image, we propose that in situations where brand elimination can be viewed as the firm''s effort to improve performance, consumers will rate this action favorably, with concomitant outcomes relating to firm evaluation. These ideas are supported in three studies. Study 1 finds that elimination targeting a weak (vs. strong) brand is more likely to be associated with eliminate-to-improve attributions, and consequently, more favorable evaluations. Study 2 shows that explanations provided by the firm (as against explanations generated internally by the consumers) help consumers make positive attributions for elimination targeting a strong brand, but lower evaluations when a weak brand is being eliminated. Study 3 establishes that loyal consumers are more likely to assess the applicability of an ‘eliminate-to-improve’ attribution and give favorable evaluations only when the eliminated brand is weak. Non-loyal consumers in general respond favorably to the elimination, regardless of brand strength. Future directions for brand elimination research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Firms routinely offer warranties, often as attempts to differentiate their offerings from those of competitors. Despite this practice common to virtually every consumer durable category, extant research has been inconclusive regarding the effect of warranties on quality judgments. One potential limitation of these prior investigations is the failure to model a key element of a product warranty�consumer-side transaction costs associated with warranty redemption. In this article, we introduce the role of consumer-side transaction costs associated with warranty redemption and examine the joint impact of warranty length and warranty redemption costs for brand names of varying strength on consumers' judgments of product quality. Two experiments show that warranty length signals security but not quality, and that perceived quality increases as consumers' warranty redemption costs decrease, provided that the warranty length is short. Different dimensions or aspects of warranties have different effects on perceived quality. The implications of the results for understanding conflicting findings in the warranty-quality literature are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has found that search and experience attribute claims are processed differently by consumers, with search attribute claims typically being more believable than experience attribute claims. It is, however, routinely the case that marketers desire to promote a product by making a claim featuring an experience attribute. The marketing literature has largely neglected the issue of how to enhance persuasion of experience attribute claims. The purpose of this research was to fill this void. We reason that source credibility impacts the receipt of experience claims and search claims differently. We then report results of 2 experiments featuring 2 different types of sources in the context of 2 different categories that suggest a source high in credibility can be employed to make experience claims more persuasive. The contributions our study makes to the persuasion literature and avenues for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employed an attributional framework to test the differences between comparative and noncomparative ads when different attribute types were featured. Our experimental findings suggest that noncomparative ads might be more believable than comparative ads for experience attribute claims; however, for search attribute claims, the 2 might elicit similar levels of believability. We also find some support for the attributional underpinnings of lower believability associated with comparative-experience claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies examined cognitive responses to comparative advertising that was valuated, i.e., was either negative or positive. Negative comparative advertising featured the advertised brand derogating the comparison brand (I'm OK, you're not OK). Positive comparative advertising claimed superiority over the comparison brand in a nonderogatory manner (You're OK. I'm more OK). Subjects were exposed to either a negative comparative ad or a positive comparative ad. In study I, the ad featured either a high or low share advertised brand and either a high or low share comparison brand while in study 2, the ad featured advertised and comparison brands with either a strong or weak reputation. Across both studies, it was found that negative comparative advertising evoked significantly higher counteraugmentation and lower claim acceptance than its positive counterpart. Also, when the advertised brand had a high share relative to the comparison brand, counterargumentation was also and claim acceptance was higher vis-a-vis when the advertised brand had a low share relative to the comparison brand. Findings pertaining to brand reputation were mixed. Managerial and future research implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]