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This paper aims to investigate how recommendations from close- versus distant-others influence consumer preferences. This paper explores how the consumption setting (public vs private) differentially affects the relative weight given to recommendations from these two sources.

Through five scenario-based experiments and an internal meta-analysis, this paper examines whether consumers are more likely to follow recommendations from distant- (vs close-) others in public consumption settings. As a test of the underlying process, this study also investigates the mediating role of distinctiveness-signaling motivation in why consumers overweight recommendations from distant others in public settings, and the moderating role of atypical product design.

The findings of this study support the hypothesis that recommendations from distant-others have a greater impact on consumer preferences in public consumption contexts, as opposed to recommendations from close-others. This result can be attributed to the heightened salience of consumers’ distinctiveness-signaling motives in public consumption contexts, leading them to prioritize exhibiting uniqueness over conforming to close-others’ recommendations. However, this study also reveals that the presence of alternative sources of distinctiveness, such as atypically designed products, can mitigate this effect, leading consumers to seek conformity to close-others’ recommendations even in public consumption contexts.

This research did not look into the possible culture impact on the nonconforming consumption behavior. Previous research indicates that in collectivist cultures, nonconformity and distinctiveness are valued less (Kim and Drolet, 2003). This may imply that even with provoked signaling motives, collectivist consumers may not exhibit divergence from close-others. In fact, they may do the exact opposite and possibly become even more conforming to recommendations from close-others.

This research shed light on the business practice regarding word-of-mouth (WOM). Specifically, this research results suggest that for publicly consumed product, companies may need to seek a nontraditional WOM and use less WOM from consumer’s close-others.

Marketers often use referrals and recommendations from close-others to shape consumers’ preferences. In contrast, this study shows that for publicly consumed products, consumers may diverge from conforming to their close-others.

This paper aims to understand how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumers’ perceptions of outdoor consumption categories, such as retail shopping, eating out, public events and travel and how these perceptions may impact businesses in these domains in the long term. Further, this research aims to understand demographic effects on outdoor consumption inhibition during the current pandemic and discuss how businesses can use these insights to rebrand their offerings and evolve after the pandemic.

Data collected by CivicScience, a survey-based consumer intelligence research platform, during April–July 2020 forms the basis of the preliminary analysis, where the chi-square test has been used to examine significant differences in consumer attitudes between different age groups, income groups and genders. Further, a social media analysis of conversations around outdoor consumption activities is undertaken to understand the rationale behind these demographics-based attitude differences.

Results lend varying degrees of support to the hypothesized consumer attitudes toward outdoor consumption activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the pandemic wore on, older (vs younger), female (vs male) consumers and lower (vs higher) income-group consumers had reportedly higher inhibition toward different outdoor activities. Older individuals were significantly less likely to shop, dine and attend public events than younger individuals. Lower-income consumers were significantly less likely to dine and travel than higher-income consumer consumers. Female consumers were significantly less likely to shop and travel than male consumers. Social media scan of conversations suggests that differences in perceived health and financial risks may have resulted in demographics-based differences in outdoor consumption activities.

This study contributes to the literature by understanding demographic differences in consumer participation in outdoor activities. One limitation is that due to the time-sensitive nature of the pandemic research, further studies could not be conducted to understand the implications of other variables, beyond demographics that influence consumer behavior during a crisis. A future research direction is to understand how other psychological variables or traits, influence health and financial risk-taking behavior during a similar crisis.

The principal contribution of the present research is that it tests the risk-taking theory in the context of outdoor consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic. The present research has implications for businesses as they continue to evolve during and post Covid-19.

Anti‐consumption is a new domain of research that deals with why individuals avoid consumption of particular products. To date, research in this area is only confined to the rejection of goods, with no evidence from the services industry. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of anti‐consumption behaviour for public health services, by deriving data from Swine Flu vaccination resistance in Turkey.

The research employs a factor analysis method based on data collected from 519 individuals.

Findings suggest that there is a strong anti‐consumption attitude of the Turkish public towards the service, and a major reason for avoidance was moral incompatibility, such that the public believed that the vaccination served the interests of pharmaceutical companies and the government. The findings also reveal that all the factors previously mentioned in the literature may be involved in the anti‐consumption of public health products.

This study suggests that public products, including public health services, are highly subject to anti‐consumption movements, and policies involving such products should also be considered from this perspective in order to provide an increased welfare for the public.

We make use of rich microdata from the Belgian MEqIn survey, which contains detailed information on individual consumption, public consumption inside households, and time use. We explain the observed household behavior by means of a collective model that integrates marriage market restrictions on intrahousehold allocation patterns. We adopt a revealed preference approach that abstains from any functional form assumptions on individual utility functions or intrahousehold decision processes. This allows us to (set) identify the sharing rule, which governs the intrahousehold sharing of time and money, and to quantify economies of scale within households. We use these results to conduct a robust individual welfare and inequality analysis, hereby highlighting the important role of detailed consumption and time use data.

European Union (EU) member states are dedicated to a set of sustainable development goals, among them to: (1) promote well-being for all at all the ages and (2) achieve gender equality. This chapter uses the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology that enables comprehensive measurement of intergenerational transfers, both public and private, and differences in the gender equality promotion among the countries. Our analysis is based on the fully comparable NTA results for 25 EU countries from 2010. The authors perform cluster analysis based on five indicators, measuring the importance of different types of age reallocations and the differences in gender equality promotion among the EU countries. Since the economic life cycle (showing the level of dependency) and its financing strongly depend on country-specific institutional and cultural settings, the authors link their results with the typical welfare regimes’ typology. The authors end up with three different groups of countries showing a clear north–south division of countries.

This chapter is devoted to fiscal policy theory and to how its evolution influenced the policy principles implemented from the end of the World War II to the present. It shows how the theoretical foundations evolved, from the Keynesian theory according to which public expenditure was conceived as an instrument to sustain aggregate demand and achieve full employment, to the present theoretical framework in which, following the intertemporal approach, it has been downgraded to an external shock. The public debt issue is examined with the aim of explaining why sound public finance represents a primary policy objective in the Eurozone.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of self-related traits on consumer self-brand connection (SBC) and communal-brand connection (CBC) in public vs private consumption. Marketing practitioners will benefit by understanding the consumer traits that can be triggered and focused on in advertising campaigns. Moreover, it is important to know which traits have a significant impact on each product category section (i.e. public vs private use).

An experiment used a between-subjects design with two randomized blocks of publicly used brands and privately used brands. Within each block, the relationship between independent variables (narcissism and need for uniqueness [NFU]) and dependent variables (SBC, CBC and purchase intention) were analyzed using SmartPLS.

The results showed that narcissism has a significant positive impact on consumers’ SBC for publicly consumed products, no effect was found for CBC. NFU shows a significant positive impact on SBC and CBC for both categories. The results also showed a positive impact for SBC on purchase intention, no effect was found for CBC.

Future research can examine brand names that people favor the most and test whether individuals’ narcissism and NFU is influential on their SBC and CBC with the brands, regardless of the exposure to the visual cues provided in this paper. Moreover, there are more behavioral outcomes that need examination. For example, it would be fruitful to see whether attitude toward the ad, or brand attitude are affected by consumers’ narcissism and NFU.

The results contribute to the effectiveness of advertising in different industries. For instance, brand managers and marketing practitioners can benefit by understanding which product types are more attractive to consumers based on their tendency toward uniqueness. Moreover, narcissism is another common trait that can be used to target consumers. Thus, certain product types may be more attractive to consumers based on their narcissism tendencies.

Despite the popularity of SBC and CBC research, there is limited knowledge about the consumer traits which can stimulate and enhance these concepts. As such, an important question that needs to be addressed is: “What consumer personality traits lead to higher SBC and CBC?” When it comes to self-concept, a limited number of studies exist that explore the actual types of personality or self-concept that generate a desired connection between the “self” and brands.

This paper aims to analyze the macroeconomic effects of a monetary policy shock considering that fiscal policy is under fiscal constraints. For that, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model was developed for Brazil, which was estimated through Bayesian econometrics.

In the basic model, the government does not have any type of fiscal restriction. The other two estimated models, however, consider that the fiscal authority implements some kind of fiscal rule. One of these rules is the Constitutional Amendment 95/2016 (EA 95/2016), which includes a limitation for government spending. The other Alternative Rule seeks to represent the characteristics of a more austere fiscal rule, as proposed by Wesselbaum (2017).

It was possible to verify in this paper that the implementation of EA 95/2016 by the Brazilian government does not produce statistically different results and that it reduces the welfare of the households in relation to the scenario without fiscal rule. Thus, the proportionate benefit of EA 95/2016 is less than the cost associated with this fiscal rule (less welfare). If the government adopts a fiscal constraint similar to the Alternative Rule, it is possible to considerably reduce the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy, thereby reducing the fiscal dominance policy over monetary policy. However, the cost in terms of welfare is much higher than the baseline scenario. Thus, the fiscal authority is subject to a trade-off among public debt stabilization and household welfare.

The study intends to contribute to the literature on three specific points. First, the monetary–fiscal policy interaction within a representative model of the Brazilian economy is discussed. In addition, the study considers that the government can adopt EA 95/2016 and the Alternative Rule, used in the US economy. Second, the impacts of EA 95/2016 and the Alternative Rule on household welfare will be quantified. Finally, two types of individuals (Ricardian and non-Ricardian agents) and two sectors of production (wholesalers and retailers) are considered. In this paper, the DSGE model is estimated, since the previously mentioned authors performed simulations

This study examines the effect of face on consumer responses to socially responsible hospitality brands and the influence of the consumption setting. Based on the literature on face concern, the consumption setting is expected to influence the effect of face on consumer responses to socially responsible brands.

An experimental design with face concern (low vs high) under two consumption settings (private vs public) was adopted for a fictitious hotel involved in community service. To test this design, 360 participants were recruited.

The results showed that face positively affected consumer responses to socially responsible hospitality brands. Consumers with a high (vs low) level of face concern had higher purchase intention and a greater propensity to spread positive word-of-mouth for hospitality brands with strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations. In addition, the favorable effect of face concern on consumer responses was more pronounced in a public consumption setting than in a private consumption setting.

Hospitality service managers could strengthen the physical evidence of CSR brands during service encounters. This strategy would be more effective for consumers who have a high level of face concern and lead to an increase in revisit intention.

This study highlights the effect of face on consumer responses to CSR brands and the influence of the consumption setting. Managerial implications for hospitality service managers regarding communication and brand management strategies are discussed.

This study examines the impact of incidental pride on consumer preference for attention-grabbing products. This effect is mediated by the desire to gain attention. This study also shows that the effect of incidental pride is qualified by visibility of consumption.

Using two studies with between-subjects designs, this research examines the difference in preferences for attention-grabbing products between hubristic and authentic pride.

Individuals who experience hubristic pride (vs authentic pride) show greater preference for attention-grabbing products and have a strong desire to gain attention from others. However, when consumption is perceived as private (vs public), preferences for attention-grabbing products weaken for those who experience hubristic pride.

This research studies the effect of incidental pride on consumer preference. By examining dispositional pride effects, future research may expand these findings, which enrich the literature on emotion. Future research can identify the potential mechanism for the relationship between authentic pride and preference for attention-grabbing products in the context of private consumption.

Marketers and salespersons can guide and recommend products with attention-grabbing features to customers celebrating a friend’s success in recognition of their innate ability. Second, marketers may encourage consumers to buy attention-grabbing products with targeted advertising or emotion-eliciting advertising (i.e., evoke a certain type of pride).

While prior studies focused on basic emotions, this research has investigated self-conscious emotions that are central to consumer behavior. This research contributes to the understanding of self-conscious emotions that affect consumers’ behavioral responses in unrelated situations. Investigating the two facets of pride, the findings show the impact of pride on the preference for attention-grabbing products and reveals that visibility of consumption moderates the effect of pride.