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Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, prior studies have revealed that conspicuous consumption by men has signaling functions (i.e. signaling the consumer’s positive mate qualities such as status and ability to acquire resources) for mate attraction. However, it is unclear whether conspicuous consumption of luxury products by women has a function in mate attraction. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of mate attraction goal on women’s interest in conspicuous consumption and the possible mediating effect of the attractiveness enhancement need in this effect.

A survey and two experimental studies were conducted in which 354 Chinese female undergraduates participated. In the survey, the respondents’ desire to have a romantic partner was measured; in the two experiments, the participants’ mate attraction goals were primed. The authors followed the literature to measure dependent variables (i.e. consumption measures), but the specific consumption items were adapted to meet the purpose of the current research. The authors analyzed the data from the three studies through analysis of variance, regression analysis and bootstrapping.

Young women with a strong (vs weak) desire for a romantic partner reported a high level of attractiveness enhancement needs, thereby indicating a higher willingness to pay (WTP ) for conspicuous items that can enhance their attractiveness (Studies 1 and 3). Furthermore, activating young women’s mate attraction goal can also increase their WTP for conspicuous items (Studies 2 and 3) and attractiveness enhancement items (Study 3) but not inconspicuous luxury product (e.g. underclothes) (Study 3). These findings suggested that young women consider conspicuous consumption of certain products as a means of enhancing attractiveness to acquire a desired mate.

This research identifies a novel function of conspicuous consumption: young women, especially those who do not have a romantic partner, may use conspicuous consumption of certain products to satisfy their attractiveness enhancement needs and, ultimately, to attract an ideal mate.

The purpose of the study is to propose a framework for understanding the dynamism of the human self-system from evolutionary and socio-psychological perspective. The study aims to help scholars interested to use an evolutionary lens for examining consumer behaviour.

Relying on the principle of self-cybernetics, the study proposed a general framework explaining the operating mechanism of human self-system. The proposed framework incorporates the socio-psychological and the evolutionary perspective of the human self-concept.

The framework may help consumer scholars to integrate socio-psychological and evolutionary theories to produce novel and testable hypotheses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to propose a framework based on the principle of cybernetics to facilitate the use of an evolutionary lens in consumer research.

Electric cars (EC) adoption represents a strategic action aimed at promoting environmental sustainability. Although Millennials and Gen Z represent the greatest potential market for EC, their adoption remains low; thus, this study focused on examining the role of motive in predicting EC adoption intention within these two generations’ population. Built upon the fundamental motive framework, this research explores the motives that lead to EC adoption intention. Subsequently, this study aims to examine the role of performance expectancy as the mediating variable and EC attributes beliefs as the moderating variable that can promote EC adoption intention.

Both exploratory and confirmatory methods were used in this investigation. Using an exploratory approach, this research explores the fundamental motives and the attributes of EC that influence EC adoption intention. Using a confirmatory approach, this research tests the mediating role of performance expectancy. To collect the data, an online survey was administered to 260 young consumers in Indonesia.

The results of PLS-SEM analysis from the data revealed that self-protection, kin-care, status and affiliative motives influence EC adoption. Furthermore, performance expectancy mediates the relationship between self-protection, mate acquisition, affiliative motives and EC adoption intention. Among EC attributes, the short-haul performance strengthens the indirect relationship between affiliative motive and EC adoption intention.

The main limitation of this study is that it only focuses on the practical attributes of EC, whereas psychological attributes that were found to be more influential in consumer’s purchase decisions were not examined.

Marketers need to explore EC attributes that can strengthen the relationship between consumers’ motives and EC adoption intention by increasing consumers’ evaluation of performance expectancy. In this study, marketers can promote short-haul performance, as it will lead to EC adoption for consumers with affiliative motives.

This study ties together two lines of research on the adoption of EC, exploring EC attributes and examining consumers’ motivation to choose EC, especially Millennials and Gen Z. In this way, EC attributes facilitate the fulfillment of consumers’ needs and promote EC adoption intention.

The purpose of this paper seeks to develop a motivation-based complementary framework for temporally dynamic user preferences to facilitate optimal timing in web personalisation. It also aims to highlight the benefits of considering user motivation when addressing issues in temporal dynamics.

Through theory, a complementary framework and propositions for motivation-based temporal dynamics for further testing are created. The framework is validated by feeding back findings, whereas some of the propositions are validated through an experiment.

The suggested framework distinguishes two ways (identifying/learning and shifting) of using a motive-based approach to temporal dynamics in web personalisation. The suggested outcomes include enhanced timing in matching current preferences and improved conversion. Validation measures predominantly support both the framework and the tested propositions. The theoretical basis for the approach paves a path towards refined psychological user models; however, currently on a complementary level.

While the framework is validated through feeding back findings, and some of the propositions are validated through basic experimentation, further empirical testing is required.

A generalised approach for complementing personalisation procedures with motivation-based temporal dynamics is offered, with implications for both user modelling and preference matching.

This paper offers novel insights to web personalisation by considering the in-depth effects of user motivation.

This study aims to examine how loneliness, romantic relationship status (single/non-single) and romantic attachment factors (sociosexual orientation index (SOI), satisfaction with current relationship) interactively affect conspicuous consumption.

Five quasi-experimental studies were conducted with different measures of conspicuous consumption across a variety of samples (N = 1189).

Study 1 shows that loneliness increased singles’ but not non-singles’ conspicuous consumption. Study 2A further shows the mediating role of the mating motive amongst singles. Study 2B compared conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption and showed no interaction effect between loneliness and romantic relationship status in the domain of inconspicuous consumption. Studies 3 and 4 tested whether the effects of loneliness on non-singles’ conspicuous consumption were moderated by SOI and satisfaction with current relationship, respectively. Specifically, lonely non-singles with high SOI or low satisfaction with current relationship sought conspicuous consumption, but those with low SOI or high satisfaction with the current relationship avoided conspicuous consumption.

This study did not specifically consider different roots of loneliness (lack of romantic love, friendship or family attachment) between singles and non-singles, which future research should explore.

The findings have implications for both marketers and policymakers regarding marketing campaigns for conspicuous products, support programmes satisfying the specific social attachment needs of different lonely people, etc.

This study identifies a specific social attachment desire of the lonely, namely, romantic motive, by which loneliness influences singles’ and non-singles’ conspicuous consumption in different ways. The findings suggest the value of distinguishing types of loneliness.

This research considers new and unexplored explanations of why consumers continue to engage in environmentally damaging, fast fashion consumption. It explains why rational arguments alone do not prevent fast fashion consumption or encourage consumers to move toward greater adoption of sustainable fashion consumption behaviours.

This research compared the effects of a “neutral” control and an “intrasexual rivalry” experimental condition on: (1) likelihood to buy, and (2) willingness to pay, of frequent female fast fashion shoppers (N = 184).

Women use fast fashion as a conspicuous signal to other women, although this is not necessarily why they waste fast fashion purchases. Mating motives appear to produce a significant increase in fast fashion buying behaviour with women feeling intrasexual pressure to engage in consumption, and utilising consumption themselves as a self-promotion strategy.

Retailers tackling wasteful fast fashion consumption can demonstrate that sustainable consumption provides a superior conspicuous signal to fast fashion consumption, instead of solely using rational messaging.

Grounded in evolutionary psychology, this study uses three theories of intrasexual rivalry, conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste to understand how both the volume and variety of fast fashion consumed are used as conspicuous signals in a mate attraction context.

People engage in green consumption for many reasons, both conscious and unconscious. This paper aims to draw on evolutionary psychology to propose that hard-wired mating strategies encourage both men and women to increase their green consumption in the presence of members of the opposite sex.

Observations were conducted on 324 students who purchased cold drinks in disposable cups from a college café. The students were offered the choice of adding 20 cents to their purchase for a bio-degradable cup.

Overall, 160 students agreed to pay the premium for a bio-degradable cup, with green purchases 46 per cent higher among women and 61 per cent higher among men when facing a cashier of the opposite sex.

The findings suggest that the activation of mating cues prompts students to display prosocial, altruistic behavior and/or to engage in conspicuous consumption (i.e. agreeing to pay more for the sustainable product). The study was conducted in the field using naïve participants and demonstrates the application of evolutionary psychology to green marketing. It also adds to what is a surprisingly small literature on the effect of employee–customer gender mismatch.

Most hypotheses proposed to explain human food sharing address motives, yet most tests of these hypotheses have measured only the patterns of food transfer. To choose between these hypotheses we need to measure people’s propensity to share. To do that, I played two games (the Ultimatum and Dictator Games) with Hadza hunter-gatherers. Despite their ubiquitous food sharing, the Hadza are less willing to share in these games than people in complex societies are. They were also less willing to share in smaller camps than larger camps. I evaluate the various food-sharing hypotheses in light of these results.

With the improvement of consumers' health consciousness, healthy food has attracted great attention in daily consumption. Previous research into the sense of power often distinguishes it into high and low level, ignoring the impact of different construal of power on consumption behaviors. This article divides power into dual construal (responsibility vs opportunity) and aims to examine the differential impacts of the construal of power on healthy food preference.

Two pretests and three formal experiments were conducted to examine the effect of the construal of power on the consumer's healthy food preference, the mediation of self-discipline perception and the moderation of the relative strength of prevention over promotion focus (i.e. RSPPF).

Results indicate that individuals who construe power as responsibility (vs opportunity) exhibit higher self-discipline perception, which in turn leads to greater healthy food preference. However, the main effect above can be weakened among the low-power group. Moreover, the above mediating effect of self-discipline perception is stronger for individuals with higher RSPPF.

First, based on the binary-construal perspective, this study refines the classification of high power and introduces it into the antecedent research of healthy food preference. Second, this paper reveals the self-discipline perception as the inner mechanism underlying the effect of the construal of power on healthy food preference, while RSPPF as the boundary condition for this mediating mechanism. Moreover, this research also provides practical implications for healthy food enterprises that the construal of power, self-discipline perception and regulatory focus should be taken into consideration in advertising design and healthy product promotion.

The growing cost and difficulty related to “finding someone” suggests that the role of service organisations in explicitly supporting and designing opportunities for love between customers merits further attention. This study employs a multidisciplinary approach of both services marketing and the economics of mate choice to understand how service organisations can exercise the third place effect and facilitate human mate choice (love) opportunities for consumers in extended service encounters.

Three qualitative co-design workshops were conducted with actors (students, casual and professional staff) from the Australian university ecosystem (n = 36) to identify consumer expectations related to mate selection in third place service contexts. A quantitative online survey of (n = 1207) current Australian university students was used to rank the importance of core and enhancing service elements.

The authors find that love holds a status in the minds of some consumers as an implicitly expected by-product of participation within the core service consumption experience in third places. For service providers to facilitate mate choice opportunities in third places, the results suggest that the design of the connective mechanism(s) should maximise opportunities for informal consumer-to-consumer interaction to allow prospective partners to ascertain compatibility. Further, consumers expect the organisational facilitation of engagement in order to clarify expected etiquette and support goal congruence. In the tertiary education marketplace for love, there is an increased preference for interpersonal engagement by those studying on campus (compared to externally), and a positive relationship between duration of enrolment and increased priority for mate choice service provision.

This research makes a novel theoretical and empirical contribution by being the first exploration of the economics of third place love in the tertiary education sector, also being a research primer for the field of services marketing to consider service design in third places to support mate choice.