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My Research Statement is available here.
Published Papers
Understanding consumer decision making about what to eat is both complex, as multiple factors can drive food choice, and important, as food choice impacts overall health. This research examines an intuition at the crossroads of two important criteria for food decision making—healthiness and price—finding that consumers believe that healthier food is more expensive than less healthy food. While this relationship may be accurate in some cases, consumers overgeneralize this belief to contexts and product categories where it is not objectively true. As a result, the healthy = expensive intuition influences consumer decision making by impacting inferences of missing attributes and choice between alternatives. Further, consistent with dual process models, the intuition acts as a bias in shaping how consumers process information about health and price when consumers are processing heuristically, including altering both perceptions of how “healthy” a given ingredient is as a function of product price and the amount of information search consumers engage in when evaluating health claims, such that consumers have a higher standard of evidence when evaluating intuition-inconsistent claims. Overall, the healthy = expensive intuition has a powerful influence on consumer decision making, with significant implications for both consumers and marketers.
(media coverage: Washington Post, CBS News, Fast Company, The Daily Mail, The Huffington Post, Real Simple)
Papers in Progress
Sample, Kevin L. and Julio Sevilla, “Going My Way? Two-Dimensional Lighting Effects and the Spatiotemporal Perception of Elimination and Provision Claims” - Dissertation Essay #1
(preparing for submission to JCR)
Though existing research has explored the differential manners by which consumers spatiotemporally engage with the marketplace, the current research examines how a lighting phenomenon impacts an unexplored area of marketing relevant spatiotemporal claims. When products are lit from above they appear to be coming towards a consumer, yet lighting a product from below makes it appear to be moving away. In the presence of a claim of provision, consumers are shown to spatiotemporally anticipate a provider coming towards them. In contrast, in the presence of a claim of elimination, consumers are shown to spatiotemporally anticipate an eliminating agent moving away from them. Due to the associated spatiotemporal anticipation with elimination and provision claims, consumers prefer products to be lit from below when accompanied by a claim of elimination and lit from above when accompanied by a claim of provision. These preferences extend to downstream consequences of purchase intentions and willingness to pay. Implications for this research are far-reaching as provision and elimination claims are abundant in the marketplace and consumers are increasingly assessing products through two-dimensional images.
Sample, Kevin L., John Hulland, and Julio Sevilla, “The DESIGN Scale: Clarity in Diagnosing and Addressing Consumer Evaluations of Product Design” - Dissertation Essay #2
(under review at JM)
Design theorizing and marketing research are integrated to show that product designs have intrinsic (form and function) and extrinsic dimensions (solidity, usefulness, beauty, eco-consciousness, and uniqueness). The intrinsic dimensions encompass the most salient, inherent aspects of a design, those that are first noticed and evaluated by consumers, whereas the extrinsic dimensions are utilized by consumers to evaluate the potential benefits that a product could provide specifically to them after interacting with it. This research integrates design theory, expert designer input, consumer behavior perspectives, and well-established scale development procedures to develop a reliable and valid scale that measures consumer evaluations of these all-encompassing dimensions of product design. A rigorous consumer behavior perspective applied to a managerially relevant issue improves on past design scales resulting in superior diagnostic ability – revealing the dimensions of product designs that lead to positive or negative consumer response. This allows for appropriate managerial action and the ability to better communicate with designers. The substantial improvement that this scale represents is consistently demonstrated while providing considerable theoretical and practical contributions.
Sample, Kevin L., Henrik Hagtvedt, and S. Adam Brasel, “Visual Perceptual Research in Marketing” - Dissertation Essay #3
(preparing for submission to JAMS)
Marketing research findings regarding the visual perceptual domain are scattered, and the field lacks a systematic overview. Yet, substantial benefits can be reaped by understanding and applying findings from this area. In this manuscript, a systematic overview of visual perceptual research conducted within marketing is provided, specifically addressing the atomistic components that comprise the visual perception of focal objects: illuminance, location, motion, shape, size, and surface properties. Because research on these topics is limited and a cohesive framework is lacking, findings are integrated from visual perceptual psychology to expose numerous gaps that can be fruitfully explored in future research within this rich area. This review additionally provides coherent definitions and understandings of visual perception and the domains within, all the while indicating the managerial relevance of each.
Sample, Kevin L., Julio Sevilla, and Kelly L. Haws, “To See (or Not): Consumer Perspectives of and Reactions to Visibility into Public Environments”
(under review at JCR)
Despite extant research studying the physical elements that shape consumer behavior inside a store, consumer response to the exterior of stores is relatively unexplored; yet it is at least equally important that places of business can first entice consumers inside, as this will open the potential for purchases and other engagement. Specific to the current research, visibility, the ability to see and be seen, is examined. Though prior research suggests that consumers could prefer both more and less visibility, the current research demonstrates that this is dependent upon the engaged visual perspective. Consumers engaged in a first-person visual perspective are more focused on the environment resulting in more pleasure from greater visibility. Conversely, consumers engaged in a third-person visual perspective are more self-conscious resulting in greater pleasure from less visibility. Relatedly, we show that consumers are more likely to engage in first-person perspective when outside of retail environments, while they tend to adopt a third-person perspective when inside of retail environments. Through seven studies this effect is demonstrated to have marketing implications as consumer visual perspective has an impact on preferences and willingness to pay. These findings provide theoretical and practical insights to an unexplored dimension of the built environment.
Venugopal, Srinivas, Roland Gau, Samuelson Appau, Kevin L. Sample, and Rita Pereira, “The Impact of Environmental Disruptions on Sustainability in Subsistence Marketplaces: A Bottom-Up View”
(invited 2nd round review at the Journal of Business Research)
In marketing research, sustainability has typically been studied in contexts of affluence, where intellectual and ideological reasons have been the principal drivers of the phenomenon. Our paper studies sustainability from the perspective of subsistence communities and discovers that sustainability is not an abstract issue for these communities but rather a matter of everyday survival. Building further, our paper demonstrates that the domains of consumption, livelihoods, and local environment exist in a state of triadic mutuality in subsistence contexts. Furthermore, our findings show that the triadic mutuality between consumption, livelihood, and local environment is held together by traditional knowledge. When environmental disruptions render traditional ecological knowledge unusable, the sustainability of traditional way of life is seriously threatened. Our paper outlines transformative policy measures that build resilience to environmental disruptions in subsistence communities by harnessing local strengths and ameliorating vulnerabilities.
Sample, Kevin L., Freeman Wu, and Kelly L. Haws, “The Messy Satiation Effect: The Benefits of Eating like a Pig”
(3 studies complete)
Many factors influence the quantity of food consumed, but the visuals of food arguably plays a larger role than most. Unlike prior research examining the impact of only the initial visual aesthetics of food, the current research explores the impact changes to the visual aesthetics of food has on satiation during consumption. An increasing rate of satiation occurs when the food becomes messy over time rather than staying relatively congruent with the initial visual appeal, a phenomenon we call the messy satiation effect. The mechanism behind this phenomenon is a diminishing level of how appetizing the food appears. The role of guilt is also explored, as guilt from both overconsumption and food waste arises for consumers. By engaging in messy eating consumers can alleviate some of this guilt. Accordingly, an important mechanism by which psychological satiation can be impacted and overconsumption curbed is exposed, providing contributions to theory and practice.
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