Introduction to special issue: Social influence and consumer behavior

What is the nature of the interface between social influence and consumer behavior? Although one could say that any consumer behavior influenced by another person or group properly defines the interface, that view doesn’t seem to be especially helpful in furthering our understanding. What is it about consumer behavior that results in processes and outcomes attributed to social influence? The series of papers presented in this special issue of Social Influence offer a variety of perspectives on that question by examining consumers’ functioning within different social environments

In the lead article Sundie, Cialdini, Griskevicius, and Kendrick provide an update to their earlier 2006 paper discussing how an evolutionary interpretation of Cialdini's (2009) six fundamental influence techniques might operate. They argue that different problems and goals exist in various social domains important for survival, and influence techniques vary in their effectiveness depending on the nature of the relationship between the target and the agent of influence. Social influence processes assist people in effectively negotiating a mutually satisfying balance between self and social interests.

Anik and Norton's article illustrates that certain products and consumer social networks are strongly associated and products can prime those networks. Among their findings (Study 3) is that using products to prime social networks (friends versus families) results in consumers feeling closer to the people within them, and closeness mediates word-of-mouth communications about the products.

Campbell and Warren ask whether negative associations are more likely to transfer than positive associations when using celebrity endorsers in ads. They answer this question in the affirmative. Although negative information can be more diagnostic than positive information, they also offer an evolutionary-based explanation: Attention to negative information has greater value for survival than attention to positive information.

In a conceptual piece on post-decisional information search Shani and Zeelenberg posit that post-purchase search is motivated by the uncomfortable feeling that a bad decision might have been made. Although the search could confirm a poor choice, that reality is often preferred to even more uncomfortable feelings associated with not knowing the answer. Search also holds the possibility that evidence will support that a good decision was made. Hence search behavior following purchase appears to serve the function of emotional regulation. Shani and Zeelenberg note that this behavior could be theoretically framed within a cognitive dissonance perspective.

Spangenberg, Sprott, Knuff, Smith, Obermiller, and Greenwald also argue for the utility of dissonance in understanding social influence and consumer behavior. These authors test competing hypotheses offered by dissonance and attitude accessibility theories in explaining the question–behavior effect. Support for the dissonance view is obtained using a unique set of outcome measures that shed new light on this debate.

Hsiung, Ruth, and Bagozzi investigate emotions in family decision making. They argue that emotions are in many ways social events and the “substance” of social interactions. Given the nature of family decision making, emotions become interdependent, bidirectional and reciprocal, and therefore influential. Their article provides important insights into the relationship between shared emotions and the family decision-making process

The final article is by Dolinski and Katarzyna who test how to sell goods using the fear-then-relief technique of social influence. Fear-then-relief is quite similar to the “disrupt then reframe” technique with an important distinction: Disrupt-then-reframe relies on cognitive disorganization for its effectiveness, whereas fear-then-relief relies on emotional disorganization. They provide evidence that the latter strategy can be especially effective at facilitating request compliance.

So, what are we to make of this collection of research? One way to tie the papers together in a theoretically meaningful sense is to attempt to classify them in terms of antecedents of influence, such as influence agents (as described by Sundie et al.), moderators of influence, such as the types of relationships consumers develop with others (Anik and Norton, Campbell and Warren, and Ruth and Bagozzi), and outcomes of influence, such as search, consistency and compliance (Shani and Zeelenberg, Spaagenberg et al., and Dolinski and Katarzyna). Some articles, however, cut across categories of this classification.

Another way to tie the articles together is to start with Sundie et al.'s view that social influence is a balancing act between self-interest and the interests of others. Yet experience suggests that when consumer behavior is involved that balance often becomes more oriented towards self-interests. Whether one wishes to emphasize the importance of emotions, relationships with others, dissonance reduction, negativity bias, or some other process, consumer behavior is ultimately about meeting self-defined needs. Although it seems somewhat narcissistic, consumer behavior is generally about “me”, and when it appears to be about “you” that is because something about “you” is important to “me”. In a very real sense “self” focus is often a necessary condition for the effects of social influence on consumer behavior to occur.

Importantly, all of the papers in this special issue offer a rich assortment of research ideas likely to prove valuable in furthering theoretical development in the social influence-consumer behavior area. We trust readers will benefit from the research appearing in this special issue.

DANIEL J. HOWARD

Guest Editor