IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jacres/doi10.1086-700844.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evoking Goals to Be Responsible: When Political Cues Increase Utilitarian Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Jessica Gamlin
  • Ping Dong
  • Aparna A. Labroo
  • Aaron Robinson

Abstract

Political systems enable many goals that consumers can aspire toward and achieve. When consumers believe the system they are embedded in is irresponsible, political cues—that is, reminders of the political system—heighten their desire for responsible governance. This desire, in turn, evokes consumers’ own goals to be responsible, increasing utilitarian (vs. hedonic) preferences. Employing quasi-experimental methods, we first show that salience of political cues accompanying Election (vs. non-Election) Day increases utilitarian preference (study 1). Employing experiments, we then show that situational political (vs. nonpolitical) cues also increase utilitarian preference, among consumers desiring responsible governance (study 2), by heightening consumers’ own goals to be responsible (studies 3A–3B). We also find marketers employ goal-consistent advertising: political (vs. nonpolitical) podcasts include more utilitarian (vs. hedonic) product advertisements (study 4). The effects are independent of consumers’ ideology or mood. This research thus introduces novel theory incorporating the macroinstitutional influence of political cues on consumer goals and choice.

Suggested Citation

  • Jessica Gamlin & Ping Dong & Aparna A. Labroo & Aaron Robinson, 2019. "Evoking Goals to Be Responsible: When Political Cues Increase Utilitarian Choice," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(1), pages 87-96.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jacres:doi:10.1086/700844
    DOI: 10.1086/700844
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/700844
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/700844
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/700844?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew D. Meng & Jessica Gamlin, 2024. "Sexually explicit advertisements boost consumer recycling due to moral cleansing goal activation," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 205-218, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jacres:doi:10.1086/700844. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JACR .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.