Although the advance of social media has enabled people to build social connections much more easily than ever before, loneliness—an aversive feeling of being isolated and disconnected—persists in modern society. In this dissertation, I examine when, how, and why loneliness influences consumer behavior. First, I develop an experimental method to induce loneliness and identify a circumstance that experimenters can obtain a successful loneliness priming effect. Across three experiments, I demonstrate that the same loneliness primes produce different loneliness responses based on the availability of cognitive resources. Specifically, participants who are cognitively depleted tend to rely on responses evoked by the loneliness primes (showing the intended loneliness priming effect) while those with abundant cognitive resources are not affected by the loneliness primes. Building on the findings from Experiments 1-3, I investigate how loneliness affects consumer behaviors in two different marketing contexts, nostalgic product consumption and charitable giving by focusing on how consumers cope with loneliness through consumption. In Experiments 4-5, I demonstrate that consumers who lack cognitive resources tend to form positive attitudes toward nostalgic products when experiencing loneliness. In Experiments 6-7, I show that lonely consumers with limited cognitive resources are likely to donate money to a charitable organization. Additionally, I find that consumers can regulate feelings of loneliness by spending money either for themselves (i.e., nostalgic products) or for others (i.e., charitable giving). This dissertation contributes to our understanding of loneliness in marketing by identifying a circumstance in which such emotional distress significantly influences consumer behavior and by showing how consumers spend money to cope with loneliness. / Ph. D. / Although the advance of social media has enabled people to build social connections more easily than ever before, loneliness—an unpleasant feeling of isolation and disconnection—persists in modern society. The purpose of this dissertation is to expand our understanding of how consumers behave when faced with the unpleasant feeling of loneliness. Specifically, in this dissertation, I examine when, how, and why loneliness influences consumption behaviors such as preference for nostalgic products and charitable giving. First, I identify a way to experimentally manipulate consumers’ feelings of loneliness. I then apply this methodology in order to investigate behavioral differences between more and less lonely participants. Specifically, I demonstrate that lonely consumers are likely to prefer nostalgic products. This effect occurs because nostalgic consumption is associated with an expectation of positive emotions that consumers may seek out in part to reduce feelings of loneliness. In a similar vein, I show that loneliness can increase consumers’ intentions to donate to a charity. Importantly, such intentions to donate are differentially impacted by the types of charitable organizations represented. Specifically, lonely consumers are more likely than less lonely consumers to donate money to a charity supporting a person-related cause (e.g., helping children). Such an effect occurs due to the expected psychological benefits such donations will yield, such as anticipated positive emotions from helping others, which may help lonely consumers overcome their negative feelings. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of loneliness in marketing by showing that consumers may strategically spend money, either on products or via donations, to cope with their emotional distress. Several implications for marketing researchers and practitioners are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77519 |
| Date | 25 April 2017 |
| Creators | Kim, Junghyun |
| Contributors | Marketing, Herr, Paul Michael, Coupey, Eloise B., Bagchi, Rajesh, Brinberg, David L., May, Frank Dominick |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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