My research is in the field of consumer behavior. Broadly, I use experimental methods and text analytics to examine psychological questions with important implications for marketers and consumers.
My primary stream of research lies at the intersection of judgment, decision-making, and goals. Specifically, my dissertation examines how consumers perceive and respond to failures, including possible product failures, service provider shortcomings in the marketplace, and instances where consumers themselves fail to utilize their purchased products fully. This work naturally connects to a broad range of substantive topics, including situations where consumers are prone to fail, learn about, or talk about failure (e.g., consumer finances, tracking technologies, word-of-mouth).
My secondary research area investigates consumer-brand relationships and assesses the impact of conversational AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini) on these relationships and, more broadly, on consumer behavior.
Abreu, Luis, Sarah Memmi, and Jordan Etkin (2024), “Perceiving Greater Variety among Past Conflicts with a Focal Goal Reduces Expected Goal Conflict,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming.
Many important personal goals, such as health, career, finances, and social relationships, entail repeatedly performing the same (or similar) actions over time (e.g., to exercise daily or save money weekly). When pursuing such ongoing goals, people are likely to accumulate multiple experiences of goal conflict (e.g., multiple occasions when one failed to exercise or save as intended). How might these past experiences of goal conflict inform expectations about future goal pursuit? This research examines how the perceived relationship among past conflicts with a focal goal-in particular, perceived variety-shapes expectations. Perceived variety refers to the holistic assessment of differentiation (vs. similarity) among items in an assortment. Six studies demonstrate that perceiving greater variety among past conflicts with a focal goal decreases expectations of encountering conflict in the future. This occurs because perceiving greater variety makes the causes of past events seem collectively unstable (i.e., more temporary and one-off). Consequently, holding constant the number and content of past events, perceiving greater variety among past conflicts with a focal goal reduces expected goal conflict. Further, considering past events that prompt (i.e., motivate) less (vs. more) engagement in causal search (i.e., events that are less self-relevant, or positive) attenuates perceived variety's effects. The findings contribute to understanding of goal conflict, variety and similarity, and forecasting in goal pursuit.
Abreu, Luis, Jordan Etkin, and Holly Howe, “How Language Shapes Recovery After Failing to Adhere to a Goal.” Invited revision at Journal of Marketing Research.
Goal failure is an important problem that is costly for both companies and consumers. Consumers purchase products, subscribe to services, and download apps in support of valued goals, yet often fail to use these tools as much as intended. But how do consumers tend to talk about such failures? Why? And might the language they use shape their likelihood of future success? A multimethod examination, including examining the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), demonstrates that how consumers talk about goal failure—specifically, as “not having” versus “not making” time—shapes both how they feel about those events and their likelihood of succeeding at their goal in the future. First, the studies illustrate that consumers prefer to say they didn’t “have” (vs. “make”) time for a goal because doing so makes them feel better about what occurred. Second, the studies show that, though such framing may support a rosier view of the past, it is detrimental to future action. Prompting consumers to say they didn’t make time, increases subsequent goal adherence. The findings shed light on how language shapes consumer behavior, deepen understanding of the psychology of time, and have important implications for how companies manage goal failure.
“You Didn’t Follow the Plan: When Consumers View Contracting an Illness as Controllable and Blameworthy.”
With Kaitlin Woolley and Jordan Etkin. Manuscript in preparation for the Journal of Consumer Research.
Contracting illnesses, like the flu, make effective excuses for service disruptions (e.g., hairstylists, dentists, or sitters who cancel last minute) and for breaking social commitments. Illnesses are often considered uncontrollable and external (Weiner et al. 1987). However, for some illnesses, like COVID-19, a series of salient plans (i.e., means) have been laid out to achieve the goal of "slowing the spread." How do consumers perceive those who apparently "fail" to pursue this goal? How do consumers perceive friends or co-workers who failed to do something expected because they became ill with one such illness? How do they perceive a service provider who cancels an appointment for the same reason? What attributions do people make about those who test positive for such illnesses? Six studies show that, compared to similar illnesses (e.g., influenza and RSV), consumers believe that illnesses with salient plans are more controllable, leading them to blame those who test positive, including blaming service providers for lack of service. Importantly, the results show that these judgments can have downstream consequences on intentions to switch providers.
“Do Consumers Want to be Close to All Their Most Preferred Brands?”
With Gavan Fitzsimons. Manuscript in preparation for the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
A prominent goal of brand managers is to help consumers develop close relationships with their brands. Researchers have indeed proposed and recognized that brands can function as active partners that serve relationship goals. However, do consumers want to be close to all their brands? Do they often develop close relationships with their preferred brands (i.e., the brands they consume the most)? Six studies using standard scales, as well as distance measures and automated text analysis, show that consumers do not form close relationships with all the brands they most often consume. We examine different product categories: food CPG, personal care, household products, services, and durable goods. The results suggest that, while some of the observed variation can be attributed to differences across product categories, there is meaningful variation across consumers as well.