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• Article | Management Science | November 2019

  Procedural Justice and the Risks of Consumer Voting

  Tami Kim, Leslie John, Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton

  Firms are increasingly giving consumers the vote. Eight studies demonstrate that when firms empower consumers to vote, consumers infer a series of implicit promises—even in the absence of explicit promises. We identify three implicit promises to which consumers react negatively when violated: representation (Experiments 1A–1C); consistency (Experiment 2), and non-suppression (Experiment 3). However, when firms honor these implicit promises, voting can mitigate the disappointment that arises from receiving an undesired outcome (Experiment 4). Finally, Experiment 5 identifies one instance when suppressing the vote outcome is condoned: when voters believe that the process of voting has resulted in an unacceptable outcome. More generally, we show that procedural justice plays a key mediating role in determining the relative success or failure of various empowerment initiatives—from soliciting feedback to voting. Taken together, we offer insight into how firms can realize the benefits of empowerment strategies while mitigating their risks.

  Keywords: consumer empowerment; voting; procedural justice; promises; Customer Relationship Management; Voting; Perception; Fairness; Risk Management;

  Citation:

  Kim, Tami, Leslie John, Todd Rogers, and Michael I. Norton. "Procedural Justice and the Risks of Consumer Voting." Management Science 65, no. 11 (November 2019): 5234–5251.  View Details

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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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