Background in the marketing literature

1.1.2 Background in the marketing literature

The research area of this dissertation is marketing and its sub-disciplines, consumer research and organizational or B2B buying behavior. This dissertation makes its main contribution to research in these areas. More specifically, within these streams of literature, this dissertation focuses on the conceptualization of ambivalence and its role in decision-making processes (right side in Figure 1). Most of the existing marketing literature around ambivalence occurs in the area of consumer research, whereas in the organizational buying behavior literature, ambivalence is a virtually nonexistent concept.

A specific conceptualization of ambivalence has been developed for consumer research (Otnes et al., 1997), which serves as one basis on which the conceptual understanding of ambivalence is built in this dissertation. According to this conceptualization, consumer ambivalence is “the simultaneous or sequential experience of multiple emotional states, as a result of the interaction between internal factors and external objects, people, institutions, and/or cultural phenomena in market oriented contexts that can have direct and/or indirect ramifications on prepurchase, purchase or postpurchase attitudes and behavior” (Otnes et al., 1997, p. 82–83). This conceptualization offers a solid

understanding of ambivalence in terms of its antecedents (“interaction between internal factors and external objects people, institutions, and/or cultural phenomena”), but later in this dissertation, it is argued that the core of this definition (“the simultaneous or sequential experience of multiple emotional states”) has important shortcomings, which need to be addressed to develop a more coherent understanding of ambivalence in marketing (Sipilä et al., 2017b).

The studies of ambivalence in research in marketing provide a rich understanding of the antecedents and consequences of ambivalence, focusing on the domain of consumption (e,g,, Otnes et al., 1997; Nowlis et al., 2002; Nelson and Otnes, 2005; Zemborain and Johar, 2007; Chang, 2011; Penz and Hogg, 2011; Bush et al., 2015; Yang and Unnava, 2016a,b). The antecedents studied in previous research include unmet product or retailer expectations, product or task overload (Otnes et al., 1997), simultaneous positive and negative perceptions of salespeople (Bush et al., 2015), and simultaneous trust and distrust towards an online seller (Moody et al., 2014). Antecedents have also been studied on the socio-cultural level of consumption. On this level, ambivalence may arise from role conflicts (Otnes et al., 1997) or conflicts between different cultural values (Nelson and Otnes, 2005). Studies have also focused on personality traits, which can increase one’s susceptibility to ambivalence. For example, skepticism toward green marketing increases ambivalence toward green products and toward buying green products (Chang, 2011).

On the consequence side, previous research in marketing has found mainly negative consequences of ambivalence. These results have been found in the cases of the intention to consume chocolate (negative but insignificant influence) (Sparks et al., 2001), the intention to consume meat (negative and significant influence) (Sparks et al., 2001; Povey et al., 2001; Berndsen and van der Pligt 2004), the intention to behave in an environmentally-friendly way (Costarelli and Colloca, 2004), as well as purchase intentions (Penz and Hogg, 2011). Few studies have examined ambivalence from a positive perspective in the marketing literature, with the notable exception of Celsi et al., (1993), who proposed that consumers may sometimes seek ambivalence-arousing experiences, such as skydiving. Research in marketing has also discussed how consumers address ambivalence, and thereby provides additional understanding of what “tips the balance” of ambivalent evaluations toward positivity or negativity. For example, consumers with ambivalence use univalent information to turn their attitudes toward one direction (Bush et al., 2015). In a similar vein, ambivalent consumers show a negativity bias in their search for information, if it helps them to reduce ambivalence (Yang and Unnava, 2016a), and are more susceptible to implicit priming of the positive or the negative evaluations, which further influences their choices (Yang and Unnava, 2016b).

In the literature of decision-making within the field of marketing, previous studies have formed an understanding of the different stages of the decision-making process and examined how decision-making unfolds through these stages (e.g., Bettman and Park, 1980; Jewell et al., 2002; Puccinelli et al., 2009). At the intersection of decision-making and ambivalence literature within the field of marketing, a few studies have examined the

antecedents and consequences of ambivalence in different time points. For example, it has been proposed that memories of prior experiences, as well as new attitudes arising during the decision-making process can influence ambivalence (Penz and Hogg, 2011).

Furthermore, ambivalence has been studied in prospective consumption situations, in which the consumer does not know the outcomes of the purchase at the time of purchase (Bee and Madrigal, 2013). In such situations, evaluating some aspects of the future outcome positively and others negatively may lead to anticipatory ambivalence, which in turn has a negative influence on prospective consumption attitudes and intentions (Bee and Madrigal, 2013). Additionally, one recent study addresses how the timing of information influences the purchase intentions of ambivalent consumers. The study suggests that ambivalence toward a salesperson can be reduced by providing positive information about the salesperson after the initial contact with him/her (Bush et al., 2015).

Furthermore, when consumers with ambivalence receive positive information about a salesperson during their interaction with the salesperson, their purchase intentions in fact decrease (presumably because consumer become suspicious of the positive information), whereas if they receive the positive information after the interaction, their purchase intentions increase as a result (Bush et al., 2015).

Previous studies have also discussed ambivalence during two sub-decisions in the context of product replacement, namely the decision to retain an old possession and the decision to acquire a new possession (Roster and Richins, 2009). The findings indicated that when a consumer makes a replacement decision under ambivalence, he or she is more likely to experience negative affect about the decision post-purchase (Roster and Richins, 2009), thus providing some insight on ambivalence in different stages of the decision-making process. In addition, it has been proposed that in the judgment stage, which corresponds roughly with the information search stage discussed in section 1.4.3, the decision-maker forms an overall evaluation of each alternative (Jewell et al., 2002). Furthermore, in the judgment stage, ambivalence is not coped with, as the need to cope is a function of the temporal proximity of the choice (Jewell et al., 2002). According to this framework, in the choice stage, which corresponds roughly with the evaluation and decision stages discussed in section 1.4.3, the decision-maker resolves ambivalence and chooses the best alternative among multiple options (Jewell et al., 2002). However, the specific antecedents and consequences of ambivalence in each stage are not elaborated on in detail in the study of Jewell et al. (2002). These advancements in consumer research indicate that various temporal aspects might come into play when ambivalence is studied in different stages of the decision-making process. However, these studies have discussed only a subset of the stages, and not the complete process. The discussion thus far is visualized in the right panel of Figure 1.

Figure 1. Background and positioning of the dissertation

In sum, the present dissertation is positioned at the intersection of the ambivalence and decision-making literature within the field of marketing, as visualized in Figure 1. These lines of literature are based on the ambivalence and decision-making literature in psychology (as visualized by arrows in Figure 1), which is also applied in this dissertation.

Figure 1 visualizes the positioning of the dissertation within the existing literature.