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Albert O. Hirschman famously wrote against parsimony. He wanted to complicate economics. The locus of these complications was often individual behavior. This paper makes three arguments about such complications. The first is that the growing experimental evidence on individual behavior broadly supports many of Hirschman’s proposed complications. In particular, there is evidence of preference change under “reflection.” Second, I argue that there is experimental evidence of both “good and bad” preference change in market society. The third is that the policy of “nudging” would not sit well with Hirschman. “Nudging” is a return to the “parsimonious” instinct in economics; and it misses the real implications for policy of the insights from behavioral economics, which, of course, are more complex.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic effects of users’ initial experience and user attachment on downloading information-seeking (e.g. news, map, education) and -sharing (e.g. messenger, chatting, social networks) applications.

From one of the largest application stores in South Korea, 225 applications were examined through analysis of 1.5 years of download records. Logistic regression and Bayesian models including time-varying coefficients were used.

Over time, the download patterns of users of the app market become dynamic. In the initial stage, users have a tendency to download apps of similar types. For example, users who initially download information-seeking applications continue to download these types of applications more frequently than information-sharing applications. In the later stage, however, users tend to download applications that accord with their attachment intensity. Users who want to share information with others are more likely to download information-sharing applications as compared to information-seeking ones. Finally, this tendency persists with the accumulation of more experience.

This study applies existing models and theories from previous research to the app market, such as state dependence, intrinsic motivation, and time-varying coefficient models. However, this study focuses on information-seeking and -sharing applications. Therefore, further study is needed in order to extend the findings to other types of applications, including games, paid applications, and so on.

This study provides valuable information for marketing managers running application stores and app developers who want to maximize performance. In the initial stages when users download apps, app market managers must recommend apps with consideration of both the users’ attachment and their initial experience, but after app users have accumulated some experience, only user attachment should be considered as a criterion for recommendations.

This is a unique study in which users’ download behavior regarding information-seeking and -sharing applications is analyzed using long-term actual data.

In this paper we propose a typology of firm-stakeholder relationships based on four different states of consumption, leading to a new model of business commitment to responsible consumption. In developing this typology, we apply a physiological theory of consumption to define business as a nexus of activities capable of producing four different types of value: subsistence, growth, indifference and excess. The model represents a more coherent conceptualization of business management, drawing upon long-term multi-dimensional value management in firm-stakeholder relations. Thus, in our model, we establish normative connections between value creation and responsible consumption, and indicate more specific measures of value creation for stakeholders, by promoting subsistence and growth, and discouraging indifference and excess. We are thus taking value creation stakeholder theory one step further, by exploring how different levels of value or utility could inform integrative, convergent value creation processes within the firm as a network of stakeholders.

This paper aims to develop a model that explains the moral bases of consumer ethnocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism as purchase dispositions. The authors build their work on moral foundations theory and the social theories of Emile Durkheim.

Theory-building from general theories of motivation is grounded in cultural norms, and empirical research is conducted to test theoretical propositions.

The focus is on the theoretical implications of binding or individualism morals of consumers within social groups. Consequently, variables in the model relate to ethical themes of community, autonomy and divinity. This theory posits that, for a variety of considerations, loyalty has a direct and positive effect on consumer ethnocentrism and on consumer cosmopolitanism. Serendipitously, other moral foundations have negative effects. The authors theorize that negative relationships exist between authority and consumer cosmopolitanism, and between sanctity and consumer ethnocentrism. This model also illustrates that consumer ethnocentrism positively predisposes favorable domestic product judgments.

New ethical factors in consumer dispositions affecting product purchase decisions are explored. Hypotheses can be empirically replicated and moderated in future research.

Marketers can use the variables of personal values, moral foundations and gender role identity to fashion marketing communications and to target selective consumer segments.

The persuasion process of social marketing will be enhanced by understanding relevant motives.

The use of the fine-grained moral foundation antecedents to predict consumer predispositions of ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism is without precedent.

This chapter explores theory and local context of socially constructed pandemic fears during COVID-19; how material and non-material fear objects are construed, interpreted and understood by communities, and how fears disrupt social norms and influence pandemic behavioural responses. We aimed to understand the lived experiences of pandemic-induced fears in socioculturally diverse communities in eastern Indonesia in the context of onto-epistemological disjunctures between biomedically derived public health interventions, local world views and causal-remedial explanations for the crisis. Ethnographic research conducted among several communities in East Nusa Tenggara province in Indonesia provided the data and analyses presented in this chapter, delineating the extent to which fear played a decisive role in both internal, felt experience and social relations. Results illustrate how fear emotions are constructed and acted upon during times of crisis, arising from misinformation, rumour, socioreligious influence, long-standing tradition and community understandings of modernity, power and biomedicine. The chapter outlines several sociological theories on fear and emotion and interrogates a post-pandemic future.

Off-price fashion retailers are expected to dominate the retail sector over the next five years. Surprisingly, selling excess designer labels, in what some describe as a disorganized manner, appeals to certain shoppers who enjoy the “thrill of the hunt.” Recent research conceptualized consumers, whose motivation for, and outcomes from, fashion shopping set them apart from previously reported shopper types. Referred to as “Sport Shoppers,” they view fashion shopping as an achievement domain. The purpose of this paper is to quantify such shoppers through the development of a valid psychometric scale.

Four studies, comprising depth interviews and online surveys, across two countries were employed to develop a three-dimensional scale of the sport shopping experience. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were used to analyze and test a theoretically hypothesized model.

Study 1 generated items aligned to the three theoretical dimensions of the sport shopping experience. Study 2 confirmed reliability and factor structure of the psychometric scale. Study 3 provides evidence of convergent and discriminant validity with previous shopper types. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates nomological validity through a theoretically hypothesized model of the sport shopping experience.

This is the first study to employ achievement goal theory in a consumer behavior context to delineate an emergent shopper type. The developed scale is the most comprehensive, multi-dimensional measure of the experience of this new consumer type. As such, it represents a valuable contribution to fashion retail and consumer behavior literature. The scale enables practitioners to quantify target markets and identify relationships to other factors, such as overall satisfaction and brand repurchase intentions.

There is a perception that non-religious consumers are less ethical than religious consumers. Studies found prejudices against atheists around the world and assumed that those who committed unethical behavior were more likely to be atheists. Hence, first, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of consumers’ intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity and atheism on consumers’ ethical beliefs. Second, this study attempts to segment consumers and identify differences between these segments.

Using data from 235 study participants in the USA and 531 in Vietnam. Subsequently, a two-step cluster approach was used to identify segments within these samples.

The study results show consumers’ intrinsic religiosity negatively influences all consumers’ unethical beliefs. Similarly, atheism also negatively influences all consumers’ unethical beliefs. This study also complements other studies exploring consumer ethics in developing countries. In addition, the segmentation analysis produced unique segments. The results from both samples (USA and Vietnam) indicated that non-religious consumers are less likely to accept various unethical behaviors compared to religious consumers. Religious consumers are not necessarily more ethical and atheism consumers are not necessarily less ethical. In the end, are implications for business ethics, religious and non-religious leaders on how to view the impact of beliefs on consumer ethical behaviors.

This is one of the first few studies investigating the impact of atheism on consumer ethics. The results of this study further extend the knowledge of study in consumer ethics by comparing consumers’ religiosity and atheism.

This chapter questions the way virtue ethics is being drawn into debates about the ethics of social research. In particular, it suggests that discussion of virtue may be motivated by a desire to counter existing, largely principlist, approaches to the ethics of research and its associated administrative structures; virtue ethics has a prima facie appeal for those who are seemingly in need of an alternative moral philosophy. In addition, I argue that, as it stands, the complexity of virtue theory is not fully reflected in, or acknowledged by, debates about the ethics of social research. In the light of these remarks I suggest that the resources of social research can be drawn upon to generate critical theoretical insights into the ethics of social research. I discuss how a normative understanding of practices, and the concept of synderesis understood in a broadly Bourdieuan framework, could provide a starting point for such critical insights. I conclude that this perspective might be taken to suggest that the ethical stance most appropriate to the culture of social research is one of ongoing critical engagement.