Choi, Sungchul

In complex industrialized societies, it is virtually impossible for individuals to know the environmental impact of their consumption. A personal cap and trade system, which assigns citizens limited, tradable allocations of pollution (e.g., carbon pollution), can link individuals directly to their environmental impact and enable them to chart a path to sustainable living. To explore public reactions to this system, an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample of individuals residing in Canada viewed a video describing either a carbon tax system or a personal cap and trade system. A personal cap and trade system based on allocations of kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (kgCO2e) was viewed as significantly more likely than carbon taxes to enable Canadians to reduce their carbon consumption and to live more sustainably. A range of public concerns that might limit support for carbon pricing systems were identified with qualitative analysis of participant comments about the systems.

Consumer evaluations of brand extension are becoming increasingly important to the consumer market (Kaur & Pandit, 2015); however, little attention has been given to crosscategory specific research in this field. This research examines whether there are correlations between an iconic product (a product category already occupied by the brand) and its crosscategory extension product and how the user experience on an extension product affects its iconic product. The findings reveal that consumers have a positive attitude toward an extended product when they perceive credibility, quality, and innovativeness from its iconic product. Consumer perceived image-fit and advertisement-match are positively correlated with consumer attitude. The results support that the post-evaluation on an extended product affects its iconic product; however, user experience with an extended product does not correlate with consumers' evaluations of an iconic product on their evaluations of the extended product because of the survey limitation.

Using a Construal Level Theory (CLT) foundation, the authors conduct four studies which find consumers are more likely to pay attention to short-term (long-term) benefits if an event is taking place in the near (distant) future. Additionally, when people are deciding for themselves (acquaintances), they’re more likely to pay attention to short-term (long-term) benefits and proximal (distant) spatial locations. This research provides theoretical and managerial implications, as businesses can tailor marketing campaigns to emphasize short-term/long-term attribute dimensions to prime consumers to choose a certain alternative depending on how psychologically distant they are from an event/object. The research methods used were questionnaires where participants chose between two alternatives. The current research aims to uphold philosophy from previous literature that states: a primary aim of consumer research is to understand aspects that are influencing different trade-offs of a choice set in the preference construction process (Bettman, Luce, & Payne, 1998).