Ravi Dhar, Joel Huber, and Uzma Khan
Executive Summary
Imagine a consumer who stops at a department store on her way back from work. Although not planning to make any purchases, she finds herself walking out of the store an hour later carrying numerous items. Shopping momentum arises from the idea that shopping has an inertial quality, that there is a mental hurdle in the shift from browsing to shopping, which, after it is crossed, makes further purchases more likely. Shopping momentum contrasts with a strictly rational perspective in which the decision to purchase any product is based on its associated costs and benefits.
The authors demonstrate the shopping momentum effect by showing that the purchase likelihood for a subsequent item ("target") increases with the purchase of an initial unrelated item ("driver") independent of the desire to limit shopping costs by consolidating purchases or complementarity across items. The authors label the increase in purchase propensity for the target item "shopping momentum." First, they demonstrate and replicate the main effect that an initial purchase enhances the purchase of a second, unrelated product. They also show that positive affect associated with the first purchase is not sufficient to produce the effect (Study 2). They explain their findings in terms of the literature on goal-related mind-sets. Building on the theory of mind-sets, the authors posit that shopping momentum can be viewed in terms of a shift in consumer cognitive mind-set from deliberation to implementation. Specifically, they propose that the first purchase produces a shift in the mind-set from deliberation-based browsing to implementation-based shopping and that the shift makes subsequent purchase more likely. Next, they provide supporting evidence for the mind-set framework through a demonstration that the initial purchase alters mind-sets as predicted (Study 3) and that subsequent purchase is influenced by the evoked mind-sets (Study 4). Finally, they provide a boundary around the effect by showing that shopping momentum dissipates when the expenditure sources are separated (Study 5). In conclusion, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications and suggest direction for future work.
Biography
Ravi Dhar is George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing and the Director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management. Ravi also has an affiliated appointment as Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. His research awards include the William F. O'Dell Award and the AMA Doctoral Dissertation Award (honorable mention). His other research papers have also been a finalist for the Paul Green Award and a finalist for the O'Dell award. He has written more than 30 articles and serves on the editorial boards of leading marketing journals, such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research (area editor), and Marketing Science (area editor), among other journals.
Joel Huber is the Alan D. Schwartz Professor of Marketing in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He has taught at the business schools at Penn State, Purdue University, and Columbia University. He received his PhD and MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his BA from Princeton University. He has been associate editor for Journal of Consumer Research and Marketing Science and is currently the editor of Journal of Marketing Research. Joel's research examines context effects in choice, ways to measure preference and value, and, most recently, ways people can prepare so that they will enjoy experiences.
Uzma Khan is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. She is also affiliated with the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her PhD from Yale School of Management. Her research investigates preference construction, sequential decision making, intertemporal choice, and mechanisms of self-regulation. Her research has won several awards, including the SCP-SHETH Doctoral Dissertation Award and the American Marketing Association's John A. Howard Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XLIV, No. 3, August 2007
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