How Concepts Affect Consumption

Dan  Ariely; Michael I. Norton

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Article | Harvard Business Review | June 2009

How Concepts Affect Consumption

by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

Abstract

Duke behavioral economist Ariely and Harvard Business School professor Norton explore how our consumption of concepts influences physical consumption, both positively and negatively.

Keywords: Spending; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Power and Influence;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard Read Now

Citation:

Ariely, Dan, and Michael I. Norton. "How Concepts Affect Consumption." Harvard Business Review 87, no. 6 (June 2009).

About the Author

Michael I. Norton

Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration
Director of Research

Marketing

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Working Paper | 2019

Minimalism as a Status Symbol: When and Why We Admire Conspicuous Non-Consumption

Anne Wilson, Silvia Bellezza and Michael I. Norton

Citation:
Wilson, Anne, Silvia Bellezza, and Michael I. Norton. "Minimalism as a Status Symbol: When and Why We Admire Conspicuous Non-Consumption." Working Paper, October 2019. View Details

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Article | Journal of Consumer Psychology

The Feeling of Not Knowing It All

Haiyang Yang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

How do consumers assess their mastery of knowledge they have learned? We explore this question by investigating a common knowledge consumption situation: encountering opportunities for further learning. We argue and show that such opportunities can trigger a feeling-of-not-knowing-it-all (FONKIA), which lowers consumers’ confidence in their mastery of the knowledge they already possess. Specifically, listing optional follow-up readings at the conclusion of a course lowered students’ confidence in their mastery of the course material they had already learned (Study 1). Encountering an optional learning opportunity increased the FONKIA, which mediated the decreased confidence (Studies 2 and 3). We also document two moderators consistent with our conceptualization. First, participants primed with mastery (vs. instrumental) motivation were more negatively impacted when they encountered optional learning opportunities. Second, the more related the optional opportunities were to the target topic, the lower participants’ confidence in their mastery of what they had already learned. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, such as encouraging further learning or harming teaching evaluations.

Keywords: Knowledge consumption; Consumption of learning; Judgment of knowledge; Feeling ofknowing; Confidence in knowledge; WYSIATI; FONKIA; Knowledge Acquisition; Learning; Perception;

Citation:
Yang, Haiyang, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely, and Michael I. Norton. "The Feeling of Not Knowing It All." Journal of Consumer Psychology 29, no. 3 (July 2019): 455–462. View Details

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Working Paper | 2019

Hidden in Plain Sight: Consumer Responses to Pseudo-Secrets in Marketing

Dafna Goor, Anat Keinan, Nir Halevy and Michael I. Norton

Citation:
Goor, Dafna, Anat Keinan, Nir Halevy, and Michael I. Norton. "Hidden in Plain Sight: Consumer Responses to Pseudo-Secrets in Marketing." Working Paper, June 2019. (Under review at the Journal of Consumer Research.) View Details

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How Concepts Affect Consumption

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