In this section, the key concepts used in this dissertation are defined. First, the concept of ambivalence is defined, followed by more a more specific definition of different types of ambivalence. These definitions are followed by a definition of the decision-making process and its different stages.
1.4.1 Ambivalence
The psychological understanding of ambivalence is based on the attitude literature. An attitude refers to “general and enduring favorable or unfavorable feelings about, evaluative categorizations of, and action predispositions toward stimuli” (Cacioppo and
Berntson, 1994, p. 401). Attitudes are traditionally assumed to exist on a single valence dimension, with positivity at one end and negativity at the other end. This approach was challenged by Kaplan (1972) in his work on the ambivalence-indifference problem, which means that using traditional bipolar attitude measures, one cannot know whether the respondent is ambivalent or indifferent towards an issue when choosing the “middle”
option (e.g., number four on a seven-point Likert scale). As a solution, Kaplan (1972) suggested that positive and negative evaluations should be measured separately and combined into an ambivalence score. This implies that instead of being either positive or negative, attitudes can be both positive and negative (Thompson et al., 1995).
As the ambivalence concept has been applied into research in marketing, a definition has also been developed for consumer ambivalence, as opposed to more general attitudinal ambivalence. In 1997, the original definition of consumer ambivalence was developed, which defined consumer ambivalence as “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 definition, however, has been applied in subsequent consumer research to a limited extent. Instead, subsequent research in marketing has defined ambivalence mainly in terms of attitudinal ambivalence (e.g., Olsen et al., 2005; Chang, 2011; Russell et al., 2011; Schmalz and Orth, 2012; Cornil et al., 2014). Based on a thorough analysis and evaluation of the existing definitions, this dissertation highlights the need to revise and develop the definition of ambivalence used in the marketing literature (Sipilä et al., 2017b). Hence, an improved conceptualization of ambivalence is proposed as follows: Ambivalence is a structural property of any evaluative psychological concept to which two valences can be assigned; it occurs toward one clearly specified object during a decision-making episode and within the internal and socio-cultural contexts of decision-making (adapted from Sipilä et al., 2017b).
In this definition, the two valences refer to positivity and negativity in line with e.g., Eagly and Chaiken (1993). “Property” means that ambivalence operates like an adjective that can be assigned to various evaluative concepts (Sipilä et al., 2017b) and therefore is not a concept on its own, but instead requires another evaluative concept to which it is assigned (Sipilä et al., 2017b). Evaluations, in turn, consist of components, such as the affective component (i.e., emotions and feelings), and the cognitive component (i.e., beliefs and thoughts) (Fazio, 1995). “Structural” means that ambivalence occurs in this evaluative structure (Krosnick and Petty, 1995), as visualized in Figure 3. The “clearly specified object” part of the definition means that the object of ambivalence should be specified in the definition of ambivalence and that ambivalence is directed toward only one object (Sipilä et al., 2017b). This implies that ambivalence cannot be assigned to concepts that do not have specific object, such as moods (Eagly and Chaiken, 2007), and it differentiates ambivalence from other types of conflicts, such as choice conflicts, which occur between multiple equally attractive alternatives (Tversky and Shafir, 1992).
Finally, decision-making episode is an alternative term to consumption episode, which is used in this introduction for the dissertation because the empirical studies in this dissertation are conducted in both consumer and organizational contexts. However, the ramifications of a decision-making episode are based on the concept of consumption episode, which is the term used in the original publication in which the definition of ambivalence is developed (Sipilä et al., 2017b). A consumption episode refers to a “set of items belonging to the same event and occurring in temporal proximity” (Dhar and Simonson, 1999, p. 30). The purpose of the decision-making episode is simply to define which positive and negative evaluations belong to the same ambivalence (Sipilä et al., 2017b). In this dissertation, the research questions occur at the level of one stage of a decision-making process; therefore, the episode is defined in all empirical studies as one stage of a decision-making process. As these stages occur one after the other, they attached to different types of evaluations, or different attitude components, in this dissertation. Figure 3 visualizes the two attitude components, cognitive and affective, which are studied in this dissertation. As discussed in section 1.4.1, an attitude refers to
“general and enduring favorable or unfavorable feelings about, evaluative categorizations of, and action predispositions toward stimuli” (Cacioppo and Berntson, 1994, p. 401). The cognitive attitude component refers to the beliefs and thoughts associated with an attitude object, whereas the affective attitude component refers to the emotions and feelings that an object evokes in an individual (Zanna and Rempel, 1988).
Accordingly, attitudinal ambivalence has been approached from both intracomponent and intercomponent perspectives. As visualized in Figure 3, the former refers to ambivalence within an attitude component (for example, two opposing emotions toward the same object) whereas the latter refers to ambivalence between components (positive emotion and negative belief toward the same object, or vice versa) (van Harreveld et al., 2009).
Thus, intracomponent ambivalence could refer to having conflicting beliefs about a car;
for example, a car can have effective motor (positive belief) but also a poor fuel efficiency (negative belief). Intercomponent ambivalence, on the other hand, would refer to having a positive emotion (such as pride) and a negative belief (poor fuel efficiency) toward the car. Therefore, different types of ambivalence refer to cognitive, affective, and intercomponent ambivalence in this dissertation.
Figure 3. A visualization of intercomponent and intracomponent ambivalence
1.4.3 Decision-making process
Decision-making refers to choosing an action alternative to achieve a favorable outcome, based on the information available in the environment (Ariely and Zakay, 2001). More simply, decision-making has been defined as choosing a course of action based on an evaluation of its consequences (Loewenstein, 2001). Decisions can generally be categorized into fast, almost automatic decisions, which are habitual and non-analytic in nature, and slower, more effortful decisions, which require more time (Ariely and Zakay, 2001). As will be outlined in more detail in section 1.5, ambivalence is more likely to occur in complex and effortful decision-making processes than in automatic, habitual decision-making because decisions concerning important and complex issues are often preceded by conflict (Ajzen, 1996). It has even been argued that in more effortful decision-making, a considerable amount of individuals’ decision-making effort is focused on resolving conflicts (Ariely and Zakay, 2001). Complex, effortful decision-making often involves a longitudinal process, and this dissertation accordingly adopts a process approach to decision-making. From this perspective, decision-making consists of multiple sub-processes, such as becoming aware of a decision problem, specifying alternative courses of action, searching for information, identifying circumstances relevant to the decision, considering the potential outcomes of the decision, and eventually the final choice (Ajzen, 1996). In the marketing literature, various decision-making processes have been suggested that involve accessing and combining information about different alternatives and combining attributes of a particular alternative or comparing different alternatives (Pham, 1998). While all these sub-processes may not occur in all decisions, the basic principle that decision-making is a process consisting of various stages or sub-processes serves as the basis for understanding decision-making in this dissertation.
Various multi-stage models of decision-making exist, which differ mostly in the specific stages, which they identify (Ariely and Zakay, 2001). In the psychological literature, decision-making has been divided into interrelated sub-processes, namely information
acquisition, the evaluation of information, and the expression of a decision (Payne et al., 1993). An alternative categorization has been to decompose judgment and choice processes into the four sub-processes of information acquisition, evaluation, action, and feedback/learning (Einhorn and Hogarth, 1981), and therefore additionally include a post-decision stage. Pioneering work in the area of conflict in post-decision-making processes was conducted by Janis and Mann (1977), who argued that complex decisions can involve conflict at various stages of the making process. In their work, the decision-making process consists of five stages, namely assessing the need for a decision, reviewing the available alternatives, weighing the alternatives, choosing an alternative, and adhering to the choice. Such a description of the decision-making stages with an emphasis on conflict was an important step toward understanding real-life making (Ajzen, 1996). Against this background, in the marketing literature, the decision-making process consists of five stages: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase decision (Puccinelli et al., 2009).
The discussion thus far is summarized in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Stages of the decision-making process
As Figure 4 shows, while the specific stages may be different, in all process models there is a pre-choice stage, involving an information search and the evaluation of alternatives, and a choice stage involving the final choice. In this dissertation, the specific stages of need recognition, information search, evaluation, and choice constitute the decision-making process in line with prior marketing literature (Puccinelli et al., 2009), as shown in Figure 4. However, because the focus is to understand the role of ambivalence in decision-making leading to one-time purchases, the post-purchase stage is excluded from the empirical investigation. In the next section, the specific nature of the different decision-making processes that serve as the empirical contexts for this dissertation is discussed.