Three Essays on Anti-Consumers: Conceptualizing, Envisioning, and Expanding Based on Self-Construal and Political Ideology
Abstract
The current dissertation is designed to contribute to our understanding of anti-consumers and their behaviors. Although past literature on anti-consumers gets attention from researchers and marketers, it lacks a deeper understanding of who and how anti-consumers behave societally and ideologically against targeted companies. Given this lack of understanding of anti-consumers, this dissertation conceptualizes anti-consumers, develops anti-consumer measurements, tests marketing strategies to attenuate their behaviors, and adds additional type of anti-consumption behavior, switching behavior, for marketers to maximize profits.The first essay develops a typology of anti-consumers by drawing on the literature on political ideology and self-construal. The essay suggests that the co-occurrence of the two overarching personality characteristics can serve to partition consumers into four distinct archetypes, which are referred to as the 1) Aggressive, 2) Agitative, 3) Alone, and 4) Arcane anti-consumer.Based on the conceptual findings from the first essay, the second essay defines and operationalizes measures for Aggressive, Agitative, Alone, and Arcane anti-consumers. Through a series of studies, the second essay validates both scales, while providing confirmation of the effects of these consumer types on managerially relevant outcomes. Furthermore, this essay presented tests the effectiveness of marketing strategies, such as alternating their communications between gain and loss framed messages, to mitigate anti-consumer behaviors.Lastly, the third essay sheds light on how anti-consumers can benefit organizations through brand and product switching behaviors. To be more specific, the third essay explores how and why anti-consumers increase their brand switching intentions. In particular, both types of self-construal, interdependent and independent self-construal, lead consumers to avoid the social- and self-risk associated with purchasing products, respectively, whereas individuals espousing a liberal ideology exhibit increased switching behaviors.
Subject Area
Marketing|Business administration
Recommended Citation
Choi, Soochan, "Three Essays on Anti-Consumers: Conceptualizing, Envisioning, and Expanding Based on Self-Construal and Political Ideology" (2023). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI30313104.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI30313104