Dissertation

Title: Attitudinal Ambivalence: How Consumers Represent and Deal with It

Co-Chairs: H.Rao Unnava and Xiaoyan Deng

Committee Member: Richard E. Petty (Department of Psychology)

Most products we consume are associated with both positive and negative attributes (e.g. Greek yogurt is high in protein content but has sugar added for taste). When consumers simultaneously access both positive and negative thoughts about a product, the cognitive inconsistency experienced by them is referred to as ambivalence. My dissertation explores the subtle marketplace variables that influence the process of experiencing ambivalence, the associated discomfort, and how consumers deal with it. Essay 1 introduces a new variable, anticipated future consumption likelihood and explores how likelihood of future consumption influences the experience of ambivalence. Essay two explores the type of information that helps consumers reduce their internal conflict due to ambivalence. Finally, essay three explores the fundamental storage structure of dominant and conflicting thoughts using the framework of memory and examines the effect of decision context on accessibility of conflicting reactions.

Essay 1: Felt Ambivalence: Is the Thought of Future Consumption Enough to Reduce It? (Under review at Journal of Consumer Research)

Products and brands usually are associated with both the positive and negative attribute information (e.g. Greek yogurt has higher protein content but its taste is not good). Current literature on ambivalence suggests that consumers may experience latent ambivalence about various brands, but its effect is felt in the form of discomfort that needs resolution, only at the point of decision-making. Interestingly, all these studies incorporate only a one-time decision context (e.g. voting for a candidate). In reality, consumers make several repeat purchase decisions involving products about which they have both positive and negative feelings (e.g. buying a detergent, visiting a restaurant). In this article, I ask the question, do consumers who have ambivalent feelings toward a product they buy repeatedly, experience and resolve their ambivalence every time they make a purchase? Or do they find other ways of reducing their felt ambivalence so they won’t have to experience it every time they make that purchase? This research proposes that consumers are forward looking and when they realize the likelihood of repeatedly consuming a product in the future, they tend to lower their felt ambivalence so they do not experience and resolve ambivalence-induced aversive feelings every time they buy or consume the product (i.e. anticipated future consumption likelihood). Importantly, this adjustment in felt ambivalence is not due to change in attitude toward the product as consumers continue to harbor latent ambivalent attitudes toward the product, but appear to change the importance associated with the conflicting information. The reduction in felt ambivalence, attributed to one’s assessment of likelihood of future consumption, is shown to occur as early as during the first consumption experience. To marketers, this research suggests that they may consider drawing consumers’ attention to future consumption likelihood to reduce the likelihood of weaker product evaluations in a purchase scenario.

Essay 2: Felt Ambivalence: Role of Dominant-Additive versus Anti-Conflicting Information on Reducing It (Manuscript in preparation for submission to Journal of Consumer Research)

Using compensatory models of attitudes, the current literature suggests that for ambivalent objects, dominant thoughts influence the formation of overall univalent attitude. That is, as dominant thoughts are the ones’ that are higher in number (could be positive or negative) and conflicting thoughts are the ones’ that are lower in number (i.e. Negative or positive), the overall expressed univalent attitude would be in the direction of dominant reactions. One implication of this view is that adding dominant reactions is effective in reducing the ambivalence one might feel while making a purchase. Essay two challenges this assumption and proposes that, as experiencing felt ambivalence is related to accessing conflicting thoughts, providing information that negates the conflicting thoughts is more effective in reducing felt ambivalence. Results from a series of experiments show that the process of experiencing ambivalence and associated discomfort is dynamic rather than dichotomous. That is, with an increase in number of conflicting pieces of information, the magnitude of experienced ambivalence increases. Further, results show that information that negates the currently held conflicting thoughts is more effective in reducing the experienced ambivalence than the information that is additive to dominant information. Of significant interest, in study 3, when participants read positive and negative reviews about a product, and were provided with an option of picking a review to read that would help them make a decision, significantly more people chose to read the review that negated one of the conflicting reviews.  To marketers, these findings suggest that in some scenarios, creating advertisements and messages that negates negative information about their brands would be more effective strategy in reducing consumers’ felt ambivalence.

Essay 3:  Felt Ambivalence: Understanding the structure of Ambivalence Generating Information in Memory and Role of Context on Accessibility of Conflicting Reactions (Manuscript in preparation for submission to Journal of Consumer Research)

It is fairly well established that the simultaneous accessibility of both positive and negative beliefs toward a product serves as an antecedent to the experience of ambivalence and the associated discomfort.  Essay three explores the underlying storage structure of these beliefs in a consumer’s mind. Specifically, are dominant and conflicting reactions stored together at one location or stored separately characterized by valence in memory? Results across a series of studies, using response time data, support the idea that positive and negative information toward an ambivalent product are stored together. Our research then explores whether the activation of both positive and negative thoughts about a product is inevitable or whether situational or contextual variables can suppress certain thoughts and reduce one’s feeling of ambivalence. Results of two studies show that when a purchase or consumption decision is being made in any specific situation, the accessibility to situationally irrelevant information is automatically reduced, indicating that one’s feelings of ambivalence toward an object are moderated by the situation of consumption.

Contributions: The three essays of my dissertation explore the construct of ambivalence in novel ways – how it is structured in memory, how it is situationally determined, and how consumers find ways of reducing their discomfort. The first contribution is the finding that positive and negative thoughts about a product are stored together, but one’s feeling of ambivalence can be reduced in a particular situation due to differential access to only those thoughts that are situationally relevant. Second, a more effective way of reducing ambivalence is by undermining conflicting thoughts about an object and not by adding more dominant thoughts. Interestingly, consumers appear to be aware of this, demonstrated by their preference for information that undermined their conflicting thoughts rather than information that supported their dominant thoughts. A final contribution is the finding that consumers reduce their felt ambivalence toward a product they anticipate buying again in the future rather than re-experience it. They appear to accomplish this by reducing the importance of conflicting information in choosing the product. Taken together, my research adds significantly to current theory on attitudinal ambivalence.